Keeping Arnold: Or, How to Get Disowned
by Lachesism
Summary: After ten long years in San Lorenzo, Arnold suddenly returns to Hillwood, throwing Helga's world into chaos irreversibly. Gerald and Phoebe start acting suspicious about his return; what secrets does he bring with him, and what does it mean for Helga? Can she get him to stay? Does she want him to stay? And how does Lila, mysteriously absent for years, factor into his return?
1. Chapter 1 - Conditional Wretch

A/N: Thank you for reading! This story is rated M for mature language, themes, and events. Takes place 10 years after TJM, assuming Arnold found his parents and stayed with them. Buckle in, there's a lot more where this came from. R/R always welcome!

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 1: Conditional Wretch

"Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were." – Marcel Proust

* * *

"You should have come back sooner, Football Head," Helga said with sincerity. Ten years was a long time. So much had changed, their friends had grown up and moved away and changed; the class they shared together as kids in PS118 was gone. Helga was still best friends with Phoebe Heyerdahl, and of course was in her band with Brainy, but the rest had all scattered out and across Hillwood in high school or shortly after.

Arnold looked at her, feeling as guilty as he had the time he read from her pink book out loud to the rest of their friends on the school stoop. He had missed his friends, all of them, terribly. But all of that guilt was useless inside him, empty emotional calories that he could do nothing about now.

"Why didn't you write me back?" Arnold searched Helga's face for something, his question hopeful but quiet. Arnold had kept his promise at first, writing her once a month without missing even one letter. Helga read them all, touching each line of her beloved's thoughtfully composed letters and keeping them in a big box she decorated with her pink ribbon - the one he liked so much - and marked it "Important."

Over time, though, his letters started to come less and less, and then finally they stopped. Helga knew she was part of the reason.

"I wrote you back once," she said sourly, arching one of her strong eyebrows up and crossing her arms under her chest protectively. She always felt naked in front of him, terribly visible, somehow even more so now that he was back.

"'Hello Football Head, don't get killed in the jungle. Regards, Helga.' That's what you wrote to me, 'Regards, Helga.' What was that?" Arnold bitterly recited her pithy letter from memory back at her in its entirety. Helga winced with every word.

Of course, she wanted to write him back. She wanted to write him every day. She had stacks of letters, actually, boxes and boxes of them written, each of them confessing in a new and special way all of her desires, all of her feelings for him and wishing him every happiness. All of them remained unsent, and up until Big Bob and Miriam divorced after she graduated, the boxes were in her old closet. Now they sat in storage, a library of her love for him, long since packed away.

"Well what was I supposed to say?" That was part sarcastic Helga, part sincere question. "You found your family, you got what you wanted. And we were ten."

"I told you how I felt, what happened?"

"Criminy, I just said what happened. You found your family. I was a ten year old girl you thought you had a crush on because I helped you find said family. You probably didn't even mean what you said - and what was I supposed to do, ask you to come back or something? Because, duh, we were ten years old."

"I meant what I said, Helga." Arnold's voice was quiet, but she could hear the anger in his voice. She remembered when he sounded like that the last time, right before their confrontation on the FTi building.

"Yeah, well, Bucko, that's all old history now," she lied. He had no idea how much it meant to her that he was back. She felt like dying every time he looked at her. The fact that he was upset with her tortured her.

"Is it? Dammit, Helga." Arnold's snarl of frustration was genuine.

She jumped when he cursed her name, flinching like she was just pricked by a sharp needle. He'd never cussed before! She'd never heard it before anyway, and the first time she ever did, her name filled his mouth with it. She tried to show how little she cared with a disdainful curl of her lip, but it took all of her effort. She squeezed her own rib cage hard, protectively.

"Are we done here?" She finally managed to ask. Arnold just looked at her for half a beat, shook his head, and then stood up from their table. Helga's heart was dropping into her stomach, terrified he would walk out that cafe door and out of her life forever.

"Arnold, wai-" She started to say, but Arnold held up a hand to silence her, turning slightly so he could face her.

"I'm going to step outside to get a bit of fresh air. When I come back I want you to talk to me truthfully. I know you have something else to say, and I'm going to hear it before I leave Hillwood"

Before he leaves? Helga's mind raced, a bolt of white panic settling down like molten lead in her guts, making her sick to her stomach. She wanted to throw up. When is he leaving again? How much time do I have? She didn't respond to his silent, questioning look. He was waiting for her to speak. She just looked up at him helplessly, her eyebrows high and her mouth pursed in fear. He seemed to wince when he processed her expression, and then finally turned to walk out of the door.

The door chime jingled once, and he was out the door into the late summer haze.

Helga's head lowered into the bare comfort of her hands, and she tried to find the world beneath her that had just rushed away.

Why is he leaving me again?

* * *

Helga stood from her seat in the lecture hall, shouldering her pink and black canvas messenger bag and grumbling to herself in a private monologue on her way out the door.

Criminy. Idiot professor. Of course the Bronte sisters don't represent a terribly huge stride forward in feminist thought for their time, but damn it all if they weren't successful women authors! Fucking male women's studies professors!

Helga's disagreement with her Women's Studies professor stemmed from a lot of things, mostly a difference in personality, but Helga couldn't help but suspect it was because she wore a lot of pink. And it was her choice to wear pink, she liked pink. She didn't wear it to impress anyone!

Almost anyone. She thought bitterly. She remembered that he had liked pink too, specifically pink on her. For that alone she felt like maybe her professor had a point, but her Pataki genetic predisposition to catastrophic stubbornness did now allow her to ever say it out loud. As it stood, she was still the professor's favorite student partially for her enthusiasm for the subject and also the fact that Helga seemed to be exhaustively well read. Most of the students in the 101-level class simply copied notes down and asked questions; Helga challenged her professor, often. So even though this was a common occurrence, and Helga would stomp out of the lecture hall with her bag wrenched tight in white-knuckled fury, she had the highest grade in the class.

That hardly calmed the stormy sea of her anger though.

Her temper was still legendary; most of the incoming Freshman to the University gave her a wide berth after, on Greek Day, a foolish prospective Fraternity freshman attempted to catcall her for image and prestige. She was a likely target for that kind of thing; Helga had grown into the same enviable Pataki body that Olga was blessed with. And even though her strong eyebrows and nearly perpetual frown turned a lot of people off, Helga's bold style of dress, powerful and athletic build she maintained well in the gym and batting cages, and glorious tumble of nearly hip-length blonde hair made her seem like a walking Valkyrie, an image she was proud of and cultivated. And yet despite the intimidating figure she cut physically, she kept her hair in pigtails most days - not today - and wore a lot of pink flannel. It gave the false impression that she wasapproachable. Soft. So it was that the unfortunate soul, who in his misogynistic baseness thought it would earn him a few brownie points with his prospective brothers, called out to her that day.

Not only did he not get into the Frat he wanted, but he dropped out of school after she corrected the number of teeth he thought he should have. It turns out, Helga asserted with her fist, he needed a few less.

So it was that Helga's powerful, obviously disgruntled stride was given a wide berth by the rest of the student body. With her eyes cast to the ground in a scowl, she could only just make out in her periphery that there was one figure stubbornly remaining in the trajectory she was on to her next class. Growling to herself, she walked faster, not about to alter her course for some box turtle of a Freshman that didn't know what was coming.

Her blue eyes flashed up suddenly and she felt her heart do a terrible flip inside her chest when he turned around right as she ran into him, toppling them both over in a collection of tall limbs and unique hair.

"Geez, anybody get the number of that freight train?" He grumbled."Not even for insurance purposes, I have a complaint." She heard him groan as he rolled off her to get up. She lay right where she fell under him, gripping the concrete with her hands and a look of absolute terror on her face.

Arnold Shortman rolled onto his heels, rubbing his arm where she ran into him, and looked into her eyes for the first time in ten years.

"Helga?" He blinked twice, his face a mix of something she couldn't recognize.

Her mouth was dry with panic, so she licked her lips and tried to swallow. All she could manage was a dry croak.

"H-hey, Arnold."

* * *

Helga had no idea what was going on or where she was going or how in the name of anything holy she was going there with Arnold.

And yet there he was, all six feet tall of him (When did that happen? She wondered), beautiful and golden (He's so tan! She marveled), and smiling at the city around them, and walking with her.

She walked in morbid silence, unable to do much beyond a simple nod or two to simple questions he asked her about the neighborhood. She just was having difficulty processing the situation. She was now nineteen years old, and Arnold had left Hillwood not long after their adventure to San Lorenzo. After all, he found his parents in the jungle, and what is an orphan kid going to do if he finally discovers his parents out there, alive and well? And then almost ten years later, she quite literally runs into him on her University campus.

What the fuck is happening? That was the basic limit of what her thoughts could process. Arnold, (Bless Him, she thought), for his part, was merely walking next to her, a respectful but agonizing nine inches of air between their shoulders. After he helped her up off the ground, Arnold had exploded with joy, shouting and talking a Tolstoy novel a minute about how he had missed her and he was so happy to see her and he couldn't believe how tall she was, and just about a trillion other things by Helga's reckoning. She had to forcibly shut him up with a hand on his shoulder.

"Cool it, Football Head. You look like you've seen a ghost. it's just Helga G. Pataki here." She tried to play it cool. Old habits die hard, don't they old girl? She mused to herself. She was scared, and surprised, and so unbelievably happy she could barely process the fact that he was standing right there, smiling in her general direction.

"It's just really good to see you, is all, Helga." The same brilliant, angelic smile he had back then, she thought, only now it was augmented by a more robust, adult jawline andoh my dear God is that his CHIN? She had trouble just looking at him. Time in South America was apparently verygood for handsomeness.

"What are you even doing here?" She had to ask.

"I'm back!" Big smile from Arnold.

"You're back? Back back?" She wondered if he caught the tremble of hope in her voice, the quiet plea.

"Let's just get caught up first, it's been so long! I saw Gerald at his Frat house and he said you'd probably be here. I'm just so glad to see you, Helga."

She stopped walking, and Arnold stopped a step behind her, turning to look at her.

"What's up, something wrong?" He had a slight accent, she just noticed, like he hadn't been speaking English much for a long time.

Helga hesitated. Of course, she had fantasized about this exact moment, this very precise occurrence. A thousand scenarios had been played out in her imagination, her fevered dreams, her private notebooks filled with poetry and prose dedicated to him, and his memory. There was a laundry list of things she wanted to say to him, things sheneeded to hear to get closure on her end. There were hours and hours of monologues written and prepared for the myriad variables for how she would see him again. Cross-indexed and aligned according to season, location, and method, she had at her mimetic disposal the immediate way she wanted to have this go down.

Helga wanted to jump on him and drown him in kisses, and destroy the pavement beneath them with the sheer force of their pelvic collision.

But seeing him in the flesh somehow dispelled all those fantasies. Somehow, the Arnold of her dreams just didn't measure up to the Arnold standing in front of her. She could barely think, now that he was here, much less remember what she wanted to say. All she could do was panic, and stall for time. In a sick haze she remembered her next class, and felt a cool wash of relief that she had a way out.

"I-I don't have a lot of time before my next class, Hair Boy." Arnold frowned at her. It was devastating, and she felt very cowardly. She held onto her arm for comfort, and looked away, unable to bear that dreadful expression on his glowing face..

"Oh. Well. What about after, maybe we can meet at the coffee shop down the corner when you're done? Is two hours enough?"

She gripped her bag uncomfortably. He better not be asking her on a date. He had too much to explain. Too much had happened. She had confined the memory of him to an almost impossible-to-reach location. Romantic interludes were simply not possible. And even though there was little else in the entire possibility stream of this quantum universe we inhabit she wanted more than to catch up with Arnold over a cup of coffee, she was downright terrified. Unfortunately the way she typically showed fear was with anger and impatience.

"Yeah I guess that works. This better not be some kind of date, Arnold." She clenched her fist at her side, and Arnold looked at her hand, nonplussed. He canted his head just slightly, and looked at her for a beat, as if he was searching her face. She added, quietly. "I mean it."

"It won't be. Just catching up."

She knew what she wanted to do, and she also know what would happen if she sat opposite of Arnold at a little table in a dimly lit, comfy coffee shop where the exotic smell of roasting espresso beans and the romantic sound of eclectic music filled the air. She wasn't sure her heart could take jumping full on into the Arnold ocean just yet. She begged inwardly for a chance to go back to the kiddie pool. With no savior coming to her aid, and nothing left to do but go with her own decision making ability, she chewed her lip and struggled with her choice. Finally, she knew what to do.

"Alright. I'll meet you there. Don't wait up if I'm late though, I'm busy." Why did you say that? She hated herself for accepting his outstretched hand at the same time she pushed it away.

"Great. I'll count every minute." Arnold smiled at her and she had to screw up her face in a sour expression to keep from a savage, heavy tear from tearing free of her eye and rolling down her cheek. He frowned again, looking at her in the same terrible, searching way he had moments before. She shifted uncomfortably in his gaze.

"Sure, great, alright, well, now that I have a creepy stalker I'll go be on my way to class and try not to worry you've got several duffle bags with my name on them." She snorted, and Arnold made a face.

"Whatever you say, Helga." And then he turned way, and for a hideous second Helga remembered the last time he turned away from her, and what that meant for her, and she almost tackled his back. If she did that, though, she knew, heartbreak and trouble would immediately follow.

"See ya soon, Arnold." She whispered the same last words she had when he left the last time, and staggered in a daze to her next class.

* * *

Of course, Helga couldn't concentrate in her class at all. Within her heart was a stirring turmoil that rose like boiling water under her skin, and left her dizzy and surly. Thank God this is just Russian History. Helga was thankful that her easiest subject in what was really a quite rigorous semester was what followed her confrontation with Arnold. Confrontation? Hardly, I was the only one that was confrontational, she cursed herself.

How was she supposed to listen to a lecture about what was normally one of her favorite subject, Catherine the Great, when the one-time love of her life was just hanging out at a coffee shop she could get to in two minutes full sprint? Helga was decidedly not paying attention, and held her thick, bold eyebrows knitted in concentration and worry. There was too much happening in her head to make any kind of coherent thoughts gather.

What she did know was that she was extremely happy and extremely afraid. There was precisely one human being in all seven-something billion on the planet that could do this to her. She had the unfortunate luck of meeting him when she was only three years old, and was unfortunately his servant in heart and mind ever since. That was what scared her. Even though she spent hours and hours daydreaming about this exact moment, wishing every day that she would turn a corner and bump into Arnold, she never imagined how it would feel when it really happened. It always went a lot simpler in her mind.

What would he say? What did he want? Was he really just eager to catch up to an old friend - was she just a friend to him still? Their parting had been the most confusing and difficult moment in her life, and not knowing how she stood with him anymore was nightmarish.

Easy, Helga, old girl. Remember, his letters towards the end got really chummy. Helga had to remind herself of the way his writing matured and changed over time. She felt unimaginably lucky to get to watch his style and prose grow as he wrote to her, unanswered. Except for once. That was all she could bring herself to manage, that single letter devoid of anything except a casual wish for his general well health.

"Don't die in the Jungle. Regards, Helga."

She remembered the words. She chewed on what to write for months. It took her six months from the time he left to write him back, six of his unanswered letters asking her to write him back so he could talk to her about his incredible hero parents, and that pathetic response was all she could muster.

She shifted in her chair and slunk further under the desk to try to keep from getting called on, feeling her face get hot with the shame furnace of embarrassment. She knew she was red, her fair skin always showed embarrassment really easily. Luckily, her professor was an old man and uninterested in most teenage problems, and kept his questions to the ones that participated the most. It was usually Helga, but today she was visibly pensive. The normally loud-mouthed and expressive girl was quiet and tense in her chair, unable to make eye contact where it normally was held confidently.

Putting it mildly, Helga Geraldine Pataki was shaken.

He's finally back and you're too afraid to go see him. Her courage with Arnold had always been fleeting. She somehow found it in special moments, the moments when she really needed it the most. She did not hesitate to act when she felt like he was threatened or being taken advantage of; Summer had learned that lesson. She smiled to herself suddenly remembering the "kiss" she gave Arnold in her Babewatch one piece bathing suit.Still the second best kiss of all time. She smirked. Thinking of the good moments gave her the strength to keep thinking of him, to press herself forward mentally with the grim determination that she wielded like a weapon in all other instances.

Before she knew it, however, her class was over, and she had to go see him. She had to walk herself to that coffee shop and try to not act like the entirety of her world had suddenly changed again. Helga could deal with adversity - that was her forte - but in this one subject she had to force herself to do it.

Somehow one foot led in front of the other all the way to the coffee shop. She stared at her pink and black Converse high-tops the entire time, staring at the little white heart with "A+H" she doodled on them as a private joke to herself. She just had to wear them today.

Her hand mechanically pushed the door open, and the door chime jingled once. She found his face immediately, and was so shocked at seeing him a second time, nearly as bad as the first, that she had to steady herself on the wall for just an instant.

He's so good looking. She breathed to herself. Time in South America or wherever he was apparently aged him extremely well. Arnold was never a big kid, but the man sitting at the table waiting for her was almost six feet tall, and tanned in that healthy way that screamed a lifetime of working in the tropics. His hair was still that wild blonde mess, but the sun had kissed it and given him the light-drenched waves that were scattered over his forehead and eyebrows now. His head still reminded her of a football. She smiled at that, but the jaw line defined itself and his chin got just strong enough to lift up and expose the Adam's apple under a light dusting of blonde stubble.

He looked so good to Helga in his ruby red flannel shirt with his sleeves rolled up. She thought she caught a glimpse of something tattooed on his forearms, which looked strong and surprisingly well built to her. She had no idea what he had done in San Lorenzo, but it evidently was good for the male figure.

He saw her. Those big green eyes of his opened up wide and little thin lines creased at his temples when he smiled at her. One of her knees buckled, and she had to grab a man passing her on the way out as she stumbled down the short steps into the coffee shop to walk to their table.

Finally, Helga crossed her legs in the chair opposite of Arnold and looked at him in silence, her face as neutral as she could manage. He was still smiling at her, and all she could do was look at him in reverence.

"You look great, Helga," he half-laughed when he said that. "Really, I mean, you, uh," he looked away shyly, and she almost whimpered. "You grew up," he finally managed to croak out. He looked back at her, smiling still.

"Y-yeah, well, ten years does that to a girl." She hoped he didn't hear the clear tinge of bitterness in her voice, but she was afraid it was very obvious.

He didn't respond to the sarcasm. "No pink ribbon though? I couldn't imagine you without it." Helga tried not to let herself think that meant he did a lot of imagining her.

"I still have it, it's just in storage somewhere." She didn't add that it was wrapped around the box full of his letters. "Besides, I don't see that dorky blue hat you were obsessed with."

"I still have it, don't worry. Anyway, I'm just excited to be back in the old neighborhood. I didn't expect to see you here, actually, I thought you would be off with Phoebe at some Ivy League somewhere, solving the world hunger crisis." He laughed a little.

"Saving the hungry was always your sort of deal, Football Head. Besides, I got into those colleges, I just didn't like their offers. The only schools worth my time are the ones that beg me to go." At last, she seemed to find her footing, some little toehold of confidence she could use.

"Hahaha, that's Helga all right. Well what do you study?"

"Double major in Creative Writing and Women's Studies. I'll probably get a masters in something if they beg me hard enough. Oh, and pay me." She scratched at her arm, the only visible sign of body language that she was nervous. She needed to get the conversation off of her somehow. "So, uh, how about some coffee, Hairboy?"

"Oh right! Yeah, give me a second. I'll buy - not in a date way, just friends." He smiled at her reassuringly, standing from the table. She nodded at him, turning her head to look at something else. Anything else.

She couldn't help herself though, and whipped her head back around to check him out as he walked to the counter. Strong legs and a perfect ass too, and in old jeans. God, kill me, strike me dead, for I am unworthy to gaze upon such perfection. Are those dusty cowboy boots? Who is this guy? When did he become a caballero? She marveled at this Arnold ten feet away from her, looking up at the coffee shop menu in the handsome, warm light, totally oblivious of her gawking. For a second she couldn't remember the last time she felt this nervous, this physically sick just from looking at someone. But then she could, and bitterly recalled the last time he walked away for good.

He came back with two small white porcelain cups steaming and fragrant with espresso.

"Dos cafés," he said, setting her cup in front of her. "Para mi amiga." She looked at him a little funny, her bold eyebrows going up on her head, beneath her blonde bangs that she cast to the side away from the shaved surface of her scalp above the left ear.

"Oh sorry, I, uh, sometimes forget to speak English," he explained. She privately filed away that he was at least bilingual now. Another reason he was amazing, and perfect, and another dangerous weapon he had against her.

"Very fancy, Football Head, very fancy. So...so what's up? What do you wanna know about your, uh, hiatus?" She tried to get to the point of the matter. She needed to know why her. Was it just because she was one of the few left in their hometown? Did he seek her out first? She had to know. She lifted the cup of espresso to her face to inhale the deep scent, and to hide her nervous frown.

"I want to know about a lot of things, but I'll find out most of it at the party." He set his cup down, smiling disarmingly.

"Party? Beg your pardon?"

"Yeah, Gerald said he is throwing a big party at his Frat house this weekend and, get this," Arnold reached for his messenger bag, old, leather, and instantly recognizable as his father's. She wouldn't forget it, not in this lifetime. He pulled out a little black book, and Helga recognized that too. Her eyes narrowed when she saw it, instantly suspicious. Gerald and Phoebe's Little Black Book, the dossier of everyone worth knowing and every major event in the city. Spoils from a particularly dangerous adventure in high school. The ciphers contained in that humble Moleskine could destroy lives and make careers. "He's got pretty much everybody from the old gang coming."

"What? How is that possible, even for him?" Helga had to give props to Gerald's impressive network. He was the one who had - reluctantly - helped her get her first gig with her band, and a few more after that. All he asked for were favors he could cash in later. He had yet to call any of them in, and he had a lot. But she always expected that the well-connected athlete going to the same university as her would call her in the least convenient way possible. She just didn't expect him to throw his weight around with the Black Book.

"All he did was use this," Arnold smiled as he put the black book on the table in front of her. "And tell them who it was for."

Helga's eyebrows went up, and she clucked her tongue, sure Gerald was up to something disastrously inconvenient this time. Nothing good ever came from that book.

"I was impressed, and thankful," Arnold laughed, putting the black book back in his bag. "He let me borrow it to find the old gang still living nearby, and a few important others." Arnold looked down at their table and swept some strewn loose sugar off the surface, clearing his throat.

"Which is why we're here," he slowly continued. She wasn't sure why he was looking down, away from her, but it made her afraid.

He must be tired of looking at me in this light. I bet I look a terror, all sweaty and no makeup. If she hadn't already been catastrophically self-conscious she would have suddenly felt totally exposed.

"I had to see you first." His green eyes lifted, catching hers directly and holding them tight.

"Wh-wha, what?" She stammered her response. He had to see me first? What does he mean?

"I wrote you so many times, Helga. I had to see you first, to know the truth for myself." Arnold was always so driven and obsessed with the truth. It was easily one of his most heroic qualities to her, but Helga found herself stymied by it often. Moments like now were a prime example.

She didn't respond for a good while, looking at her hands on the table, eyebrows up and her expression sad.

Finally, she spoke, slowly, and quietly, so Arnold had to lean in close to hear her.

"You should have come back sooner, Football Head."

* * *

Arnold came back into the cafe ten minutes or so after he left the table. She watched him call someone on his cell phone when he left, animatedly speaking Spanish and visibly frustrated. It bothered her that she was the reason he was upset, but it fascinated her that this man she loved - loved still? - had grown so different yet remained so utterly the same.

When he sat down, she started to talk immediately, before her courage left her.

"I wrote you back every single day," she began hastily. "I just never sent them to you. I couldn't. Every letter started with 'I miss you' and ended with 'Please come home.' Criminy, Arnold, do you know how hard it was when you left? How scared I was that I would never see you again? Every letter you wrote me was a new pleasure, an amazing soul-dizzying joy that I treasured, hoarded, kept in meticulous order by date in a huge box I marked 'Important.' I was twelve when you stopped sending them every month, and sixteen when they stopped entirely. I figured you, I don't know, moved on or something."

Arnold did not answer, but just looked at her like he wanted her to go on. She was expecting him to jump in, and his silence put her off balance, prompting her to keep spilling her guts.

"So yeah, uh...so, I, I wanted to send them all to you. I wanted to know what your family was like, what you were going through, and tell you all about what was happening here. But, I figured Gerald was already telling most of the important stuff, and besides I couldn't send you something asking you to leave your family. But I was ten, and then a teen, and I..." Helga paused, forcing the words out of her mouth slowly. "I m-m-mmmissed you. That was what I wanted. I wanted you to leave them and come back to me. It was selfish. It would have hurt you."

Arnold started to make a face at her, and opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him quickly.

"No, Arnold, it would have been terrible. You don't know what I wrote. I couldn't help it, every time I started to write something friendly and apologetic for not writing back yet, everything just came pouring out of me, all over the damn pages, and in between the hot pissed off tears and ink stains were the words 'I need you every day.' I don't know how I managed to write what you got. It's a fucking miracle it was less than nine pages."

"So you just didn't send anything instead." Arnold's voice was flat.

"I couldn't be selfish and burden your new life with your parents with my stupid girlhood crush. I knew better. I hated it, but I knew someone as amazing as you would find someone out there. I was just going to be happy with what I had, nice childhood memories of a wonderful boy who was always nice to me no matter how nasty I got to him. I had the whole thing packaged up all neat and tidy, see, a real lovely little memory, and I would just live on and never forget. That was all I could do. Anything more wouldn't have been fair, or realistic, or even possible. And...and I figured you...you didn't mean what you said in the jungle, because you never said it again."

The silence between them was choking, stifling. Helga felt dizzy and sick, even worse than before. She certainly hadn't meant to totally pour her guts out to her first childhood love today. That was not on her agenda. All she could do was hope it was enough to appease him, to make him stay here to talk to her some more. She felt helpless, under his scrutiny, observed. She hated the sensation even as she thrilled under it.

Finally, Arnold gave her his reply.

"I just wanted to talk to you." His voice didn't even hide the hurt. She despaired that she hurt him. She knew she had to. She knew she would have to again. Her resolve, her absolute fortitude was that she could always do what she thought was right for him, even if it murdered her. He spoke again, this time with a bit more anger. "Nothing back for six years, Helga. Except that one letter, like nothing even happened. But it did. I said that I loved you back then, and I meant it. I may have just been ten years old, but I knew I meant it."

Her heart almost totally stopped, hammering so hard in her chest she felt it in her eyes. He couldn't imagine the power those words held over her, and what they did to her when he spoke them about her. But she was saddened by them, too, because she knew they were wasted. That was a long time ago. They were different now. He didn't know who he cared about, and it certainly wasn't the Helga in front of him. At best, she argued with herself, he thinks he loved some idea of me that got away from him and let him fantasize all day. She couldn't let herself believe him. It's over, now.

"Arnold..." Helga sighed. She was so tired. He wearied her, being this close to the sun was exhausting, blistering, and cruel to her heart. She despaired to leave his presence again, ever, but she had to get up before she couldn't ever stand up again.

"...The past is the past." Her gaze was level with his. This was maybe the longest conversation she had ever had with him, and she basically had just ended it.

Arnold looked into her face for several beats. He was badly hurt. She saw it plainly on his honest, open features, those beautiful features she would be haunted by, she knew, the rest of her life. She didn't mean a word of it. She thought she had put him in a little corner of her heart, fully sequestered and kept safe, but out of the way. Where he couldn't do any harm anymore. But today taught her, with terrible demonstration, that hewas her heart, the whole of it, and she lived to reflect him back on the world.

But she knew he had to let whatever boyish fascination he had for her go, for his sake. Ten years was ten too many to pine for Helga Geraldine Pataki. By being unable to do anything except ignore him she proved herself unworthy of his attention. Her failure was one of a spiritual collapse, a total ethical paralytic fit, an inexcusable stalemate.

Her heart dropped again when he stood up from the table. His eyes lowered, finally leaving hers, and he slid a piece of paper onto the table in front of her. Without saying another word, Her Football Head walked out of the cafe, and for all she knew, her life again.

Helga's feet curled under her chair and her hands balled into fists at her sides, her arms squeezing her waist as hard as she could to force air into her lungs. Her face was pressed on the table hard, eyes squeezed shut to keep the hot torrent in her tear ducts from welling up out of control. It was like he took her liver out.

Helga's hands gripped her pink shirt for purchase, and she felt one of the fat tears scream an angry line down her face. It had been many years since she shed any tears for Arnold; tonight, she would double them all.

* * *

Helga woke up to feel her phone buzzing furiously in her messenger bag against her leg.

She raised her head, temporarily unsure of her surroundings. Then she remembered all that had transpired not long ago in the coffee shop at the table she was dozing off on. The sick feeling started to come roaring back, so she pushed it down with the angry fact that she let herself fall asleep in exhaustion from the ordeal.

Crying alone in a coffee shop was one thing, but falling asleep from the emotions of it all was something Helga was not proud of.

Her leg felt the insistent buzz of her phone again. Whoever it was kept calling her, and wouldn't stop, she wagered, until she finally answered. Growling, she bent down to retrieve her pink phone from the bag.

She looked at the contact flashing on her screen. It was Gerald.

Beep.

"What is it?" The impatience and fury in her voice was evident.

"Shut up Pataki, and just listen." The fury in his voice was just as obvious, and shocking. Gerald hardly ever got mad in this way that she could recall.

"Listening," she ground out from between clenched teeth.

"You owe me a few big fat favors by my count, am I right, Pataki?"

"I may owe you a few minor favors. What of it, Afroboy?" She fell to old habits, referring to him by the new nickname she adopted when he started to pick out his magnificent hair into a stately and round afro.

"Time to cash in. Get your band ready for performing, and I mean tippity fucking top shape. You and Brainy are gonna play my party this weekend."

"What? No, Gerald, I can't possibly do that-"

"Shut up Pataki," he spat, impatience in his voice clear as day. "I have half a mind to march to that coffee shop and upend your tall blonde ass. He waits to see you for ten goddamn years and this is how you go with it?"

"Gerald, off this subject. Now." Helga tried to sound as intimidating as she could over the phone. It normally worked on the handsome, athletic Gerald, who typically didn't really want to tango with her.

He didn't back down.

"No, you hold up and listen to this: I'm not going to let you fuck up our plans. So you better step in line and do as you're told for once in your fucking life."

Helga's brain raced. Her considerable intelligence was able to disassemble the pieces of this conversation that previously remained elusive; like a great jigsaw a piece locked into place here, another snugly fell where its contours found the best fit. Her strong eyebrows knitted up and she breathed a surprised huff into the phone. Gerald was throwing him a party with all their old gang, or at least as many as could be reached in short notice. He was calling in favors, one at a time, from those that owed him from a lifetime of friendly debts. All those people with a young lifetime of problems unresolved, old grudges, and old loves. A massive reunion of Troubles for Arnold to see. Gerald was moving big things into place, and making grand gestures, and he was even using Helga's band as a resource. She knew what was happening here.

"You're trying to keep him here, aren't you?" Helga's voice was surprise tempered with outrage, and just the smallest tinge of hope.

"You're damn right, Pataki. What's the problem?" Gerald's voice challenged her to question him. She heard the tremble of anger in his voice.

Helga paused for several beats, her mind quickly racing with all the difficult choices she had just made, struggling with the truth she felt she knew in her heart, and the ugly conclusions that fell upon her as a result. She knew Arnold would have a better life without her. If he even felt anything for her - and Helga was sure beyond any doubting that he didn't - it was a misguided type of gratitude the lovely, loving, and generous Arnoldwanted to be something more. She was no good for him, ever, and even though in her deepest desires he was hers, Helga would never let that happen, for his own good.

But that didn't mean he couldn't stay here.

Helga lifted the piece of paper Arnold slipped her from the table, unfolding the tiny note and reading the contents entirely. Her eyes widened at the contents, unable to accept what she saw but staring at it nonetheless. She clenched her jaw, and slapped the paper down on the table decisively.

"No problem at all, Afroboy," she boldly announced. "I'm in. What do we do next?"

On the opposite end of the line, Gerald smiled wide, his white teeth showing.

"Baby, all you gotta do next is sing."


	2. Chapter 2 - Unhappy Child

A/N: The story continues with a shift in POV! The song is not mine (I'm not a song writer), nor is it Helga's. The lyrics for this song are from "Gibbon" by This Town Needs Guns. Forgive my lack of creativity, I am just inspired by these songs. I will remove the lyrics upon the Artist's request. As always, R/R is welcome!

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 2: Unhappy Child, Flash Me Your Rottweiler Smile

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love." - Jane Austen

* * *

Brainy stood on the tiny balcony of the apartment he shared with Helga, silently looking down onto the street while he smoked a cigarette. Tom Waits blared from their stereo system, filling the air in the open terrace even as it came from inside the living room. He leaned against the old white-painted wrought-iron balustrade, feeling it creak under his weight. He'd gotten just a single text from Helga, but it was all he needed to know about what kind of night she had in store for him.

"Football Head."

The formerly awkward, geeky boy had grown into a tall, lithe man, who resembled to any casual observer a blonde Buddy Holly. He especially resembled the comparison now, in his cleanly starched and pressed gingham button-down shirt with extra slim tie, high-quality denim super slim-cut jeans, and spotless brown leather Winklepicker shoes. His sandy blonde hair was high and curly at the top, and kept almost buzzed at the sides and back. His thick framed black glasses - which he found in some vintage shop somewhere - gave him a contemplative look even when his eyes were passive.

Helga's friend and bandmate had lived with her ever since her parents went through the divorce. Helga was seventeen at the time, needed a place to stay, and one of his oldest and closest friends. It was trivial to Brian, whom Helga still called "Brains" or "Brainy" from time to time, to let her move in with him.

Collectively, they made good roommates. They both had a similar expectation of cleanliness and respected each other's privacy.

It helped Brian that she was still probably the great love of his life, though he was far too respectful of her friendship to make any sort of moves on her. It wasn't always easy. The nights she came to him missing Arnold were the worst. Tonight seemed like it would be one of those nights, so Brainy had already cracked open a longneck beer and was pulling from it generously between songs of "Rain Dogs" piping in its controlled lunacy from their sound system.

Brian thoughtfully tried to remember the last time Helga was upset like he was expecting her to be this time around. He could assume plenty about what was coming; Helga was nothing if not dramatic. Her mood swings were never severe enough that he was seriously worried, but Brian knew enough to know when to stay away and when she needed someone to shove around, and when she needed someone to argue with. He didn't mind doing any of that for her - in fact, the fact wasn't lost to him in the slightest that his primary role in their friendship was to listen to her and play guitar.

Brainy started playing guitar when he was eleven. Helga had drifted apart from him, no longer having any reason to sulk back and begin one of her dramatic monologues without Arnold around. He withdrew further into his hobby as time went on, eventually becoming extremely proficient. His passion for music drove him to frequent a local record store, where he now worked part time, which is where he ran into Helga at the start of middle school. They talked music, and it just so happened she played as well. Several jam sessions later, they were Orphan, the beginnings of their current band.

Over time, they attracted other members that came and went, but the core of Orphan would always be him and Helga. Their shared passion for music blossomed an intense, intimate friendship. Brainy got a job at their local record store at sixteen, and Helga was their most frequent customer. Together, they had amassed what was probably the biggest and most thoroughly maintained record collection in the tricounty area. His efforts and focus were poured into their music, and he had a perfect partner in Helga, who had no end of lyrics and no small amount of vocal talent. Together they experimented with all manner of styles, from mathrock to krautrock and riot grrl. Brainy had found his life's true calling in Orphan, and in this way he relied on Helga just as much, if not more, than she did him.

He was just finishing his cigarette when he heard her come home, the heavy thump of her messenger bag in the kitchen, the percussive stomp of her feet through their living room towards the balcony.

His hand automatically handed her the tallboy, which she snatched from his hand without looking, and drank deeply. He was still leaning over the balcony balustrade, looking down into the alley their apartment faced. The silence between them was familiar, a comforting feeling, and always welcome between two friends who made a habit of creating terrifying and new musical noises for fun. So, he would let her quietly drink and think with him until she was ready to start talking.

A late summer light drizzle started, and she joined it with a frustrated sigh. He flicked his blue eyes her way, finally looking at her as she started to talk.

"Arnold is back in town," she finally said. Brainy's eyebrows went up high, and he pushed his glasses up his nose automatically, turning his body to face her and lean back against the balustrade with his hands. Helga's eyes flicked up and met his, and they looked at each other in silence. Helga finally sighed again and leaned over the edge, resting her chin on her folded arms.

Brainy watched her. She just looked out into the alley like he had been, her full lips pouting in their usual way. It was bad, he could tell by her calm silence that it was bad. No ranting, no screaming, and he hadn't been punched yet.

Wordlessly, Brian pushed away from the balcony, turned off the Tom Waits, and went to their living room to begin setting up their amps and pedals, plugging things in and tuning their guitars for them. He was reverent and careful with their instruments, in the same way he was reverent and careful with her friendship. When he was handling her guitar, Brainy always felt like he was handling Helga in a very real sense. When he ran his fingers along the frets, he couldn't help but imagine his fingers on her neck; strumming chords out felt like running his hands through her hair.

She came into the room and took her guitar from him when it was tuned with a quiet nod of thanks. She roughly jammed the cord into the amp, and started to play their most technically challenging and mathematically complex song.

Brian was immediately there with her, following the syncopated polyrhythm they had jammed out months back with nearly flawless precision.

She was playing roughly, he noticed. She kept missing the downbeats, and had sloppy picking technique, which was how she got when she was drunk or they played for big shows or when she was nervous. Brian noted that her knuckles were red and swollen, and could feel the hot pulse of ghostly impacts on his own hands as he imagined her punching the walls somewhere.

Helga, for her part, seemed lost in the song, her voice the typical scratchy, seeming unpracticed sound she cultivated after phases of melodic twee, hardcore and screamo, and finally the experimental guttural growls of grunge. Brian loved her singing voice, an uneven, rough and lilting sound that sounded all at once fierce and vulnerable. She could sound Springtime sweet if she needed to, but usually kept her typical barbed sarcasm laced within the slightly flat way she sang. Brainy listened with renewed interest in the poetic wrangling of her song, and took note of the revitalized passion behind her voice:

"Once more into breaches I cannot gap.  
One more chance to second guess your thoughts.  
My friends said that you would be a tough nut to crack.

Come back lets settle this up...  
...and down my spine,  
the faint tingle keeps me up at night.  
So while you dream I lie awake and look to the stars.  
No answers forthcoming I find myself locked in your arms."

Helga's voice was initially quiet and low, building and rolling on itself with emotion. Her playing continued to follow the complex mathrock rhythm they learned together, but her picking slipped as the clear choke of emotion threatened to undo the jam session entirely.

"Once more into breaches I cannot gap.  
One more chance to second guess your thoughts.  
My friends said that you would be a tough nut to crack.  
Come back lets settle this up!

Like earth and dust,  
We're one and the same; insignificant.  
Well who am I to presume that we were all but gone?  
Perpetually complexing the simple. I for one am done."

Brainy almost stopped playing, his hand hesitating for a second because of the way she sounded. Helga always played with emotions behind her effort. That was what she brought to Orphan; beyond her brilliant lyrics and extremely proficient guitar work, she was a creature of unbridledpassion. The drawback was that when she'd had a little to drink, and was messed up over the possible love of her life, sometimes the song got too real. He could feel her sadness clear as day in the dirty feedback of the amplifier, he could hear the frustration and emotive stalemate in her voice. As their song fell into the simple, plodding bridge, designed to connect the more complex and pattern-focused first half of the song to the explosive, kinetic eruption of the second, he noted that she kept her whole body curled over the guitar, her body bobbing with the 4:4 beat. Finally, she started to sing the last verse, bringing her voice up from her bent double form quietly.

"You brought this on yourself.  
Our problems had enough time on the shelf.  
We made the same mistakes,  
lived our lives without the give and the take."

Helga's voice suddenly built volume and force, her previously frustrated, fragile mezzo-soprano raising into a harsh shout as she stood straight up onto her tiptoes, playing and singing directly into the air like an explosion.

"The time we spent apart  
served to remind me of when we'd talk!  
My one and sole regret  
are the thoughts that went left unsaid!"

Helga grew quiet and continued to play the last epilogue of the song's melody with explosive passion, her hands rending the notes out of the guitar in frustration, until finally they both landed on the same closing note and stood in the buzzing silence of the expectant amps.

This wasn't a performance song. This was one of the ones they had never recorded because Helga hated playing it, and got frustrated when her fingers couldn't follow the tabs she wrote for herself. The first time she showed him what she wanted to do, Brainy just cocked an eyebrow at her, shrugged, and started to play along. Her aggressive style lended itself to powerful performances, and challenging music, but it often frustrated her.

Today, he could tell, she was playing the song to frustrate herself.

Brian heard their downstairs neighbor thumping on their floor from below, and Helga looked down at the floor and stomped twice hard. The thumping stopped, and she blew a stray strand of golden hair out of her face, misted by drizzle and sweat in the apartment's temperate heat from the kitchen radiator.

Brian stood passively, looking at her hands. Helga noticed, so she put her hands in her pockets.

"I got mad, okay," she explained. Brian nodded and put his guitar down, sitting on the chair behind him. Helga remained standing, and started to pace. Brainy was ready to hear her out, and after their therapeutic jam session, she was ready to talk.

* * *

"He just showed up out of nowhere. One minute I am ranting about the Bronte sisters of all things and the next he's standing over me like he just fell out of orbit. Then he helps me up and asks me to get coffee with him like this wasn't some kind of impossible dream to me. Like he could just get coffee with me and I wouldn't die."

Helga held onto her stomach and bent double, dramatically groaning.

"Then he is all handsome and godlike in the comfy mood light, and I swear to you Brian, he was just as sweet and honest and true as he always was. It was like he stepped out of the room and then stepped back in all grown up but exactly the same. Criminy, he even winked at me like he used to. But then," Helga faltered, her voice catching with emotion as she continued to recount her awful moment with Arnold. "Then he brought up his letters and the past and our-his confession."

Brain could feel that he had started to hold his breath. He had imagined this moment once or twice, but in his fantasies Helga turned Arnold down. He didn't know what would happen if she still reciprocated feelings for Arnold in that way. What would happen to their friendship, their band, or to him.

"And I turned him down." Helga sounded so bitterly disappointed in herself. Brian's pulse quickened, too afraid to frighten this long-awaited moment away to speak. He knew he just had to be here for her now, and everything would take care of itself naturally.

"I told him it was all in the past, why did I do that? Oh God I want to take it back, I want to go find him and tell him everything was a lie and beg him to find some shred of his infinite heaven-given patience and forgiveness to accept me. Dammit, goddammit he was right there where I could touch him and all I did was wince and scowl and cry. He must think I am repulsive and awful, there isn't any coming back from this, it's the final end!"

Helga was on her knees, pounding the floor with her fists, a disappointed and angry look on her face devoid of any of the sharp fury Brian was used to. He held onto the arms of his chair for purchase, still dizzy from the fulfillment of one of his dreams.

"And then Gerald calls me and cashes in one of those obnoxious fucking magic favors he got out of me, and fucking get this, it's for Orphan to play this huge fuckoff reunion party or something he is throwing. Everybody from 118 is going to be there, Brains."

He thought she looked legitimately scared when she said that. He certainly felt scared. She didn't seem to notice.

"I can't sing any of our songs there, they're all about him. Everyone will know, they'll all hear me singing about Arnold and so will he, and it will just be over, it will all be over. Arnold will leave forever again. How could Gerald do this to me? I was never nasty enough to him to deserve this."

Her head fell back and she looked up at their ceiling, covered in old music and film posters they collected from flea markets and thrift shops.

"Gerald then spills it that he has this plan for Arnold to stay," she croaked to the ceiling. Brain sat back further in the chair, surprised. "And apparently I am part of the plan. He wouldn't give me many details, but apparently he has this crazy plan to show Arnold he has to stick around again, that he wants to stay, but step one is that I play at this party."

Brian sighed, rubbing his chin with his palm. That was heavy.

"So I agreed." Helga turned to look at him again. "I will die of shock and embarrassment when Arnold hears these songs, but, I can't help myself, I want him to stay. I just can't help myself when it's him, and so I need you to agree to play with me."

Helga scooted over to Brian on her knees, her hands resting on his legs, and she looked up at him.

"Please, Brian, please" she begged. Her voice was full of all the sincere helplessness she could muster. "Help me do this, because if I have to, I will go up there alone, and it'll be a big fucking mess. You have to help me."

Brainy looked up, away from Helga, and out at the open balcony where the drizzle was picking up into a light rain. He wasn't sure that this day would ever happen, that he would be forced to help Helga with Arnold again, that is directly. He had spent many nights staying up before, listening to her worry and fret over the idea of never seeing him again. He had held her hand when she had crying fits because she saw someone with the same stupidly shaped head somewhere and it wasn't him. He had even let her fistfight him once, in the alley, because Olga threw out some of her old shrine stuff. He was familiar with the Arnold Problem.

But not quite like this. Helga knew how he felt. He didn't have to say it. He never would. She knew she was asking him something that would hurt him. But Brian knew she needed him, and knew what it was like to need someone and have them not follow through. He wouldn't put Helga through the same experience.

Brainy looked down at Helga as she rested her cheek on his knee, still looking up at her friend and roommate. Brian nodded. He would help her.

* * *

Helga chewed Brainy's nachos thoughtfully at their dinner table later, her mouth full and a slight smile on her face.

"Damn, Brains. You sure can cook nachos like a pro. Not half bad at all." Brian smiled to himself, facing away from her as he washed the dish he had eaten with in their sink. Helga chewed her food happily; a nice pile of junk food always brightened her spirits, and she could usually count on Brian to have just the right thing ready whenever she was pissed off or upset.

The immediate time after she asked Brainy to help her on her knees was a little awkward for them both, of course. Helga rarely, if ever, asked Brian for help directly. Usually he was astute enough to anticipate what she would want or need, and if it wasn't too much trouble for him, he would simply do it without being asked. He'd learned a lot about Helga from the years he watched her in stealthy, wheezing silence, and that came with immediate benefits now that they lived together.

The awkwardness passed, however, when Helga had grown self-conscious of herself prostrated at her friend's feet, stood up abruptly, and started pacing the room with a serious look written in her thick eyebrows.

"We need to figure out who's going to do bass and drums this time," she grumbled, the tall blonde moving quickly from her bedroom back to the living room, slapping her open palm with a fist. "I'm not letting that crustpunk swine Harold near my stage again. If I get told how every little thing I do isn't punk at this stupid party of Gerald's by Mr. Self-Proclaimed Crustiest Punk in Hillwood, I'll wring his unwashed neck."

Brainy stood up and started making them nachos while Helga thought out loud. The duo had played with a variety of their old friends from PS118 who had ended up in the music scene of Hillwood; Harold, Cid, Stoop Kid, and even Stinky plucked his twelve string guitar with them for a show once.

"And Harold's not even that good, his bass is all over the place. What about Stoop Kid?" She was more asking herself than she was directly asking Brian, but he still shrugged his shoulders for her from the kitchen counter, nodding a little to indicate he would work.

"Yeah, Stoop's not half bad on skins, not half bad at all," Helga mused. "Think we can get him up to speed in such short notice? He's not exactly the swiftest sparrow in the tree, kid's basically a fourth grader brains-wise...but he knows his stuff, I'm sure he'll work." Helga's pacing resumed as she worked out who would play bass for their show. Brainy and her always had to do this right before a performance, work through their list of known musicians that weren't previously tied to any sort of playing obligations, and basically bribe them with beers and the threat of Helga's fists. The ritual they currently practiced, carefully stepping through the motions together, was one of comfort for Brian and Helga. It told him that she was on her way towards normalcy.

Then, he had set the nachos out on the table, and Helga ravenously tore into them.

"Bout time, Brains. I was starving." Brian chewed his plate quietly with her, and they shared a fresh, cool beer, pulling from the tallboy bottle between bites.

Finally, when they were finished eating and Brian was cleaning up, Helga slapped the table suddenly.

"I've got it! Helga, old girl, you're a genius." She flashed Brian a haughty, proud grin, her teeth showing wide from between her full, pouty lips.

"Gerald wants us to play so bad," she started, and Brian saw where this was headed. Trouble, but that was typically Helga's style. "I happen to know Froboy slaps a mean bass. We'll just tell him that he has to play, or the show's off. It's perfect either way! Froboy will either chicken out and then we don't have to play the stupid party, or he goes up and we get to kick his ass with our tunes. And if he does agree, we get the better part of a week to figure out what his plan is. Oh-ho-ho man, Helga, old girl, you are just too devious."

Brian didn't mention to Helga that she had made it clear that she very much wanted to play this show, or that she previously begged him to help her. Helga had to convince herself of the difficult actions she had to take, or else her heart would falter. If bullying Gerald into playing bass with them was what she needed to go through with this, then Brainy would just play along.

She was his lead guitar anyway, and always was.

* * *

Helga reached over at Brain, pawing for the bottle of beer they were sharing. It was their fifth now, several records into the evening and plenty of Helga's rants behind them. Brian obediently passed the baton, figuring that she should be pretty sloshed right about now. They'd split four bottled 24oz. tallboys, and only eaten junk. Helga was hardly a lightweight but drinking was still a new hobby for them both, taken up because Brian's boss at the record store preferred to give bonuses in cases of beer rather than money. It was infrequent enough of an event that the pair had only ever gotten really drunk - sloppy, confession drunk - once. But he could tell that they were headed there quickly tonight, going through their supply in the fridge quickly.

Helga screwed up her face. "Beer's warm." Brain looked at her, his less-than-gentle buzz lifting his spirits and making him contemplative. Hereally wanted to push himself over into her personal space and start kissing her.

He dismissed the thought as soon as he was able, which unfortunately for him took several moments of him looking at her full, pouty lips. Helga noticed.

"D-don't stare at me like that," she slurred, pointing at him with the hand that held the bottle. "Y'stay over there, right there. Don't move a muscle, Brains." She held her hand up for emphasis, here eyebrows going high. "Stay."

Brian would listen to her. The last thing she needed was one of her best friends and roommate complicating what was an already complicated day by throwing his romantic, more-than-friendly feelings into the mix.

Brian also was pretty sure that if he started to make a move on her now, she'd reciprocate, and they'd end up tangled in limbs and lips and reallyscrew things up. Helga was passionate, and physical. She was in the gym often, and boasted abundant energy and critical verve. As far as he knew she'd never been touched by a man in that way, and had to imagine that her hormones and needs were piling up. All the frustration from the day, all the tragedy of Arnold's return, and all their years of closeness of heart and nearness of physical proximity no doubt meant that Helga was surely thinking the same thing he was.

What would happen if they just fooled around a little as friends?

The thought had occurred to Brian many times before, and he was sure it had to Helga. How could it not enter her head, when they shared everything, lived together, and were both obviously attracted to each other. It was always on his mind, anyway, what his life would be like if they stopped being roommates and started being lovers. But he wouldn't make the first move - he knew that she had to come to him, or he would be overstepping the boundaries of their relationship they outlined together when she moved in with him.

So Brian kept his distance and solemnly, physically ached for Helga while she tortured herself over another man. So he was surprised by the sudden flop of her bare foot in his lap, followed by powerful flex of her toes and ankle. She sniffed and leaned on a single elbow, taking a pull from the bottle.

"Footrub?" Her toes waggled for emphasis. Brian's pulse raced. Was this it? Was this the moment the line was crossed, and he could touch her? Was she inviting him in?

His hand reached for her foot, stopping an inch away when they both heard the dramatic, harsh buzzing of her phone from her messenger bag inches away from where they lounged in the room.

Helga's foot shot off his lap as she rolled tipsily to her bag, fishing for the phone with one hand, the beer bottle in the other. Brian's hand hovered in the spot where her foot had been, watching her with a bitter feeling of being cheated out of something.

"Yes! Hello! What is it?! Talk!" Helga's voice was full of aggression, the way she got when she was embarrassed or got caught doing something that she felt threatened her reputation.

"Yeah, I did. He did. How do you know that?" Helga still sounded like she'd been caught doing something, but he thought he could recognize the voice of Phoebe on the other end of the line. He couldn't hear what she was saying over the record they were playing, and had to settle for eavesdropping in on Helga's side of the conversation.

"You knew? You knew he was coming and didn't tell me?" That sounded bad. Her voice took a dangerous pitch, her volume rising significantly.

"Yes, well, you'd better explain fast, before I hang this phone up and come kick your ass," she started to threaten Phoebe, before she was interrupted by something Phoebe said.

"So you know about Gerald's plan too? How do you figure in? Talk fast, Pheebs, this better be good." Brian stood up from his spot, and Helga looked up at him with a scowl on her face, then apologetically smiled at him. It was a surprisingly tender gesture from Helga. Brian leaned down and took the bottle from her, and walked to the kitchen to get some physical space between them.

"Oh so its your plan too? Alright, look, I trust you, but only just barely enough to play along. I want Ice Cream to stay," she used her old code for Arnold with Phoebe almost all the time, even when it was just Brian listening. "but I don't intend on making a damn fool of myself in front of everyone we've ever known to do it. So you'd better, you know, fucking include me when you make plans that fucking involve me."

Helga sat up, rubbing at her temples. She was sobering up, and getting cranky from the uncomfortable feeling of her thoughts being far more lucid than her brain could keep up. Brian put the beer on the counter, and started to pour her a water. Striding across the room in silence, Brian handed Helga the glass of water, which she started drinking as she listened to Phoebe talk, nodding a thanks to him for the offer.

"Alright, that sounds good. Let's meet at Bigal's. I need pancakes and waffles. Plus I gotta tell you what happened, Jesus Christ it was awful, Pheebs. Yeah, I already told Brainy. Yeah. He's right here…You want to talk to him?" Helga's last question had the clear note of surprise in it. She looked up at Brain, and he shrugged, reaching for the phone when Helga offered it to him.

"Uh...hello." Brian never knew how to start a conversation over the phone, and sounded as uncomfortable as he was.

"Brian," Phoebe started. "Arnold's doing something incredibly ill-advised, short-sighted, and irreversible in an ever decreasing amount of time. I need you to promise me, for Helga's own best interests, that if you somehow discover, uncover, or unravel the truth that you won't tell her."Brian's eyebrows went up high. He looked down at Helga, who was looking up at him, genuinely confused and concerned.

"Uh...okay." He agreed, Brian had kept things from Helga many times in the past to keep her happy. It wasn't something he enjoyed doing, but things became muddled and murky when she was involved.

"Excellent. All that is required of you is to keep doing what you do for her, provide her moral support and the ear of friendship, and remember not to tell. No matter what, Brian." Her voice was as serious as he'd ever heard it. "If she finds out at a critically unstable juncture in time it will be disastrous. Everything will be jeopardized, all of it, including your friendship to her, to everyone. We'll lose Helga."

Brian felt his breath stop short in his throat. What on earth was Arnold doing?

"Uh...I understand." Brian finally breathed out.

"Good. Now, Helga is going to have questions for you regarding the tense and secretive nature of our conversation. I have advised Helga to keep a safe barrier of distance between you two in the past, so if you fall on that excuse she won't suspect anything. We'll handle the rest at the diner. Rendezvous with us there ASAP."

"Uh...Us?" Brian was more and more confused.

"Gerald and myself. It's time to illuminate you both on the plan. And please, Brian, don't tell Helga." Brian then heard the other line go blank. Phoebe had suddenly hung up. He'd never heard such urgency in her before, even considering how high strung she was.

"What the hell was that?" Helga's strong, dark eyebrows were as high as they could manage to go, vanishing beneath her blonde bangs swept to the side.

"Talk on the way," Brian struggled to answer her. He knew he'd get the third degree the entire span of their short walk to the diner. Helga gave him a look that promised his premonition was correct.

Brian handed Helga her phone, and helped her up from her spot on the floor. He reached over and pulled his corduroy sportcoat off their vintage brass coat hanger, and got his keys to lock up. Helga, taking his cues, shoved her feet into her pink converse and grabbed her bag.

The two of them left their apartment, and headed to the diner.


	3. Chapter 3 - The Orphan They Cut in Half

A/N: Another POV shift. Expect these, this is the primary device through which I manage my story's narrative.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 3 - The Orphan They Cut in Half

"The more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes" - Vladimir Nabokov

* * *

Phoebe Heyerdahl could hardly believe what she was hearing, that if she had not trusted the source of information so unconditionally, she would reject the thought utterly out of hand.

She was sitting opposite Gerald Johanssen, her long-time friend and ex boyfriend, simply at a loss of words immediately following the bombshell that the handsome young man dropped on her. The pretty, petite girl was finally able to register that she was staring at Gerald, who was staring back, and for an instant the intimacy of their gaze was enough to cause her to break eye contact and look down at her gently steaming cup of Oolong tea.

"Yeah, it shocked me too," Gerald finally said. She could hear the hint of disappointment in him, the slight acid of a bitter memory. He was clearly affected and upset by the news, which also surprised Phoebe. "When Arnold told me I nearly flew myself down there to smack some sense into him."

"But if what you assert is truthful, Gerald, don't you think we should immediately inform Helga?" Her thoughts immediately fell to her best friend, who had been pining miserably for ten years over the foolish, heroic young man in question. Phoebe had been there for it all, closest to the misery and the drama, had helped Helga over the years work herself up from a vast, cavernous depression into what was a manageable baseline level of simple misery. It had taken every lesson in patience Phoebe ever learned from her father to pull off.

Now, though, everything was threatening to unravel. Phoebe's primary interest was to get ahead of the coming disaster, and set mitigating forces in play before it made landfall and drowned everyone.

"Actually, that's the biggest reason I called you up," Gerald started. He had her undivided attention, of course, when he called her out of the blue and asked her to get coffee and pie with him.. She had no trace of bitterness over the end of their high school romance-it had happened simply too long ago for the mature, intelligent girl to bear Gerald any ill will. It helped that she was still very attracted to him, and still counted him as one of her closest friends. They spoke often enough since Phoebe ended up in the Ivy League University of her choice, but distance had a way of drifting old friends - even lovers - apart. She was all too happy to take the chance to drive the short trip back to Hillwood, see Helga, and have a coffee date with Gerald again. She had not been anticipating the reason could be this.

"See, I think my man Arnold is making a mistake." Phoebe's slender eyebrows lifted over the rim of her glasses when he confessed his analysis. "I always said he was a bold kid, but don't you think he's too young, too nice, and too selfless to make this kind of decision and not tell anyone?"

"Gerald, I'm sure that Arnold has carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages of the possible scenarios and settled on the most equitable outcome for all the parties involved. Why do you assume he has made his choice in a vacuum? Doesn't he have the watchful guidance of his mother and father from which to draw wisdom?"

"That's the thing, Pheebs, he hasn't told them yet."

Phoebe almost squeaked with surprise, she was so taken off guard by that revelation. Arnold was honest to a fault and totally incapable of guile. Besides the anomalous April Fool's Day incident, he had never managed to trick Phoebe or Helga or anyone. The fact that he had managed to keep something this significant from his parents made Phoebe uneasy.

She smoothed out the black pencil skirt she was wearing, looking at her galaxy print leggings as she unraveled the scenario for digestion and the best next steps. She noticed that Gerald watched her with interest, and felt a private little thrill that she was getting to spend some private time with him again.

Focus, Phoebe. What is imperative is that you are able to successfully navigate the emotional maelstrom that is sure to come when Helga finds out. Consider the alternatives, and calculate the variable scenarios to ensure that the damage is minimized.

Gerald cleared his throat, and Phoebe jumped, caught in her woolgathering and dissembling.

"So...I think I have a plan,:" Gerald carefully began. "Arnold's said he's coming back to Hillwood." Phoebe's eyes widened. That complicated things. "So, I say, we stir the pot."

"Stir the...pot?" Phoebe scrunched her nose at the colloquialism. She wasn't sure how it applied in this specific scenario.

"Yeah, girl, stir the pot. Listen, what is Arnold if not a busybody? And he practically can't help himself when he sees trouble, right?"

Phoebe nodded, her mind racing forward along Gerald's suggested path, seeing in advance where he was going with this.

"So you suggest that we get Arnold and Helga together, and allow the immediate dramatic upheaval to unravel Arnold's intended course of action."

"Hey, it could happen." Gerald's easy smile spread wide. Phoebe's cheeks flushed slightly, but she continued.

"Do you perhaps think that exposure to Helga will cause Arnold to rethink what you assert he has spent little time considering already, and perhaps...bring them together?"

Gerald shrugged for her. "I dunno man. I really don't. Helga's Helga. Helga G. Pataki, we're talking about. Who knows what that girl's gonna do when she sees Arnold again." Phoebe knew. Helga would explode like a shell volcano that had been building geologic pressure over eons. "But what I do know is that my man is being too bold here. Nobody in this world sets him straight faster than Helga G. Pataki."

Phoebe had to admit, the idea was cunning, if less than subtle. But the plan was too precipitous; if neither of the two performed to the expected behaviors, nothing would come of it. It needed augmentation to have any chance of success.

"Gerald, forgive my impertinence in asking, but you still possess the little black book with Fuzzy Slippers' dossiers within, correct?" Gerald's right eyebrow cocked.

"Yeah, why? What's it got to do with this?"

"Well, while I have determined that there is merit in your suggestion, I would posit that the probable outcomes are too varied and unpredictable. If we simply arrange for those two to have some serendipitous rendezvous, it is just as likely that Helga, in her panic, will push him away again. And then Arnold's fate is sealed, I am afraid."

Gerald thought about what she said, then nodded when he fully grasped the meaning of it.

"To that end, I suggest that we utilize the resources at hand; Let us make use of the ciphers that we've managed to decode thus far, and wield the influence it affords us over Hillwood. For the best of intentions, of course."

Gerald's eyebrow cocked ever higher. He rubbed at the close-shaven beard on his jaw. Phoebe knew it was a gamble. Using that book was risky in and of itself.

"Could be an idea, Pheebs, could be an idea. You thinkin' we bring everybody back together?"

"Precisely."

Gerald folded his strong arms over his red jersey. Phoebe couldn't help herself; she examined the strong cords of muscles that roped from his biceps to his wrists. Gerald had always been athletic, but he really approached scholastic sports with enthusiasm now that he was in college. It had been effective in augmenting his already considerable attractiveness to Phoebe.

"Let's say we throw Arnold a 'Welcome Home' party?" Phoebe nodded at Gerald's suggestion. It was a good idea. A large, significant social gathering, liberally lubricated by alcohol and populated by a lifetime's supply of old friends, rivals, and crushes. It was the ideal environment to expose Arnold to Helga and let sparks fly.

"We need to get Helga's band to play at the party," Gerald suddenly blurted out. Phoebe jumped at his suggestion, and then furiously worked out in her thoughts what that would accomplish, and what it risked.

"I think that is a very high risk, high reward scenario. If you have observed any of Helga's songs, you would hopefully be astute enough to immediately recognize the subject matter as almost exclusively Ice Crea-er, I mean, Arnold."

Gerald nodded, enthusiastically. "Yeah, exactly! How you think that's gonna make my man Arnold feel, when after ten years of writing Helga all those letters and getting nothing back, he comes to the party and she's up on stage singin' about how bad she's got it for him?" Phoebe thought that Gerald had adjusted remarkably well to the thought of Helga having feelings for Arnold; when he initially discovered Arnold kissing Helga when they were ten in the jungles of San Lorenzo, Phoebe vividly remembered the hyperventilation, the shrieking, and the manic rants against this reality as being impossible according to every known law of creation. And here he was, frankly including what he thought he knew about Helga's feelings in the difficult equation of Arnold plus Helga.

"I can only imagine the turmoil that would bring to his heart. If he was unsure in the slightest about his chosen course of action, it would certainly suffice enough to give him pause. Perhaps rethink his decision entirely."

"And you throw in everybody from PS118, all unloading all their pent up shit from the years? Arnold's a trouble magnet. Guarantee at the end of the night he's thinking about moving back to Hillwood."

"That is definitely a possible outcome," Phoebe nodded. She sipped at her now cooling tea. The woody flavor and slightly astringent bitterness refreshed her mind. "But we must remain mindful of the fact that when Helga finds out, her reaction will likely be a violent outburst. Perhaps Arnold has matured enough to weather such a reaction, but if there is confusion within him it might harden his heart all the same. And then we are faced with the original dilemma, without any means of escape."

"Shit. This is too hard, man. I'm not meant for this kind of thing." Gerald took a deep breath, leaning back in the booth to look at the ceiling. Phoebe looked at his large Adam's apple, then up at his brown eyes.

"Luckily you have me, an expert on such maneuvering," Phoebe cheerfully sighed. Even though what they faced was serious, irreversible, and disastrous, she couldn't help but admit she still enjoyed Gerald's company as much as when they were dating. Of course, when she got into University, they amicably parted, both recognizing that the challenges of a long distance relationship would mostly likely only serve to end their friendship. It had been at this exact diner, in fact, in this same booth that they had embraced once last time as lovers, and then shook hands again as friends.

And though she rarely made bold moves herself, the sometimes sneaky Phoebe felt like she didn't want the evening to simply be about Arnold and Helga.

"You have become very handsome in six months, Gerald," she finally said.

Gerald lifted his head up and looked at her, a little smile on his face. "Oh yeah? Did I?"

"Indeed. I'm very glad you called me, regardless of the unpleasant matter at hand. Strategizing with you is very…" Phoebe ran her finger along the ceramic rim of her teacup. "stimulating."

Gerald's eyebrows waggled, and then he smiled one of his trademark smooth smiles at her. Phoebe had to stifle a giggle, she was so tickled by his reaction.

"Well hell, baby. Why don't we call it a night for Arnold, and start the night over, just us like old times?"

Phoebe's eyes flashed with excitement over the rims of her glasses. That interested her a great deal. The rest of the details of the plan could wait. After all, Gerald had invited her for drinks and dessert, and she would satisfy her sweet tooth.

* * *

Phoebe and Gerald sat in the booth together at Bigal's Diner, on the side facing the door so that they could see Helga and Brainy coming. it had been a little less than a month ago that they had met here for the first time in six months to discuss the situation with Arnold. Phoebe blushed privately at the memory of how that night had concluded, very aware of the male presence of Gerald sitting next to her. His hand was on her knee casually while he drank his coffee. The secretive, intimate contact thrilled her.

"They better get here soon," he sighed into his steaming cup.

"I stressed the urgency of the matter to both Helga and Brian," Phoebe assured him. "I especially stressed to Brian the importance of not revealing the truth to Helga, should he somehow discover the secret."

"Good call, Pheebs. That guy don't say much? But he listens too damn much. Who knows what he'll find out."

"Even if he were to discover everything, it is unlikely that he would jeopardize the plan by telling Helga. I, uh, put the fear in him."

Gerald laughed briefly, but became very serious as he saw the darting flash of blonde in the window. The two of them straightened up right away, hands above the table, preparing for when Helga would storm in.

She didn't disappoint. The glass door slammed open, the little bell above the entryway jingling out of control at the nearly tectonic violence of the motion. She was soaked, of course, because the late Summer weather had picked up into a steady unseasonal rain. It somehow added to the terror of her entrance, like a literal feminine force of oceanic nature had burst in and would lay her terrible vengeance on all she surveyed. Phoebe felt her heart leap into her throat-somehow even after decades of friendship, Helga always managed to shock and surprise her with her level of Amazonian ferocity.

"Alright, start talking right the fuck now, Froboy!" Helga demanded, slamming her wet messenger bag onto the booth table and leaning over them menacingly. Phoebe watched Helga stare down Gerald many times in the past, but rarely had he literally withered under her as he was doing now, shrinking like a dried up slug beneath a harsh and angry sun.

Phoebe started to talk, noting that Brainy had walked up behind Helga to loom above them, silent features quiescent and simply observing.

"Helga, calm down and take a seat. We're going to calmly share a slice of pie, and then we'll discuss what is going on in exhaustive detail. Threatening Gerald is neither productive nor necessary."

Helga shot Phoebe a hot, angry look. Helga rarely, if ever, got mad at Phoebe. It was always about Arnold when she did. Phoebe swallowed the awkward fear she felt when her best friend was in a fury, and stared back up at her. Helga seemed to calm down a bit when Phoebe didn't back down, and then shoved herself into the booth, crossing her arms over her pink flannel shirt clinging to her chest.

"Alright fine. You want to calmly share some pie, then you're buying, Froboy. I want it a la mode, too, and don't skimp on the whipped cream."

Gerald sighed, not daring to roll his eyes but still visibly frustrated.

"Yeah, sure Pataki. You want anything, Brian?" He nodded to the tall boy that had managed to sit in the booth next to Helga without Phoebe noticing.

Brainy shook his head, and in the brief pause in the conversation, Phoebe grabbed the reins of control and began to explain to Helga and Brian the carefully chosen details of their plan, selectively opting to omit the specific pieces about Arnold's secret.

* * *

"Where you goin', girl?" Gerald's voice was playful and sleepy in the darkness as Phoebe slipped from the bed and started to dress.

"We still have a lot to work out, Gerald, and I thought I could energize our minds with a pot of fresh tea." Phoebe finished slipping her skirt onto her hips, smiling at the boy who lounged just barely covered by the sheets of his bed. His athletic form thrilled her, even now, but she had tasks at hand to prioritize her attentions.

"Mm, mm-mm!" Gerald tsked. "You're like the Energizer bunny. Between you and Arnold, Gerald Johanssen is headed to an early grave." Gerald flashed his white teeth, and rolled over onto his stomach to gather his clothing as well.

Phoebe made her way quietly into the frat house kitchen. She was sure that girlfriends-was that what she was now?-were no stranger to these walls, but it still felt slightly intrepid to find herself stalking barefoot through the old wooden hallways to heat up a late night pot of tea. When she had the single teapot she could find on the burner, quietly rolling to a steam, she had a moment to thoughtfully chew on the Arnold problem.

There are variables we do not know, and variables we don't know that we don't know. She chewed on her thumb, her thoughts always fell to her favorite strategists when she was having trouble. If we bait Arnold out, he may reveal the reasons behind his decision. But it carries a lot of risk, and relies upon the trust he has in us. Phoebe frowned as the teapot whistled itself into readiness.

That was the hardest part. Deceiving their closest friends. If their plan was going to have any chance at all, it would necessitate the careful manipulation of their two best friends, and people they loved. Nobody would be lying, she reasoned with herself. Appropriate dissemination of intelligence is strategy 101. And it is for a noble cause.

That last thought made her pause as she was scooping the loose leaf tea she found into the teapot. Was it a noble cause? That was one of those known unknowns, she recognized. They didn't know why Arnold would do something so dramatic, so permanent like this, so unannounced. Arnold at least thinks he has a good reason. It is important for us to discover his reason right away.

Phoebe walked the quiet solitary stroll back to Gerald's room, closing the door behind her and setting the tea set on his desk.

"Bless the baby angel responsible for days like today," Gerald sighed. Phoebe stifled another giggle with her hand, handing him the small cup of steaming hot green tea.

"We need to find out why Arnold is doing this first, Gerald."

He blew over his teacup, nodding in agreement. "Yeah, I know. My man's got to have what he thinks is a good reason."

Phoebe finally spoke her biggest worry aloud. "What if he is sincere, and this will make him happy? We would be dishonoring our friendship to him...we would be dishonoring our friendship to Helga."

Gerald sipped at the tea, wincing a little at the bitter flavor. He always did that, but he never argued with Phoebe when she poured him a cup.

"I've thought about that...believe me. It's all I think about. If he's serious, and this is gonna make him happy, then all we can do is cheer him on. And I'll be there." Phoebe nodded, feeling the same way. "But," he started, and she felt hopeful. "I don't hear that in his voice. He sounds tired. I'd be, I dunno, excited. Happy. Pumped, hell, I'd be pretty much any kind of way but tired as hell."

Phoebe nodded, settling down on his bed next to Gerald. The details of the plan she had spent the better part of their evening together ruminating on began to take shape in her mind. She had to test them out on the most reliable source she had. Gerald. "I propose that we compose our plan in three stages. The first stage is the preliminary reintroduction of Arnold to Hillwood, and in particular Helga."

"Keep talking, beautiful, I love when you get all Patton on me." Phoebe swatted at Gerald for his flirtatious comment.

"Remain focused, Gerald. The second stage requires the exact opposite; isolation." Phoebe used her hands to pantomime the motion of segregating Arnold from the rest of Hillwood for emphasis. Gerald held his lightly bearded chin thoughtfully. Phoebe thought it gave him a distinguished look, even if she knew it was grown merely for the superstitious purposes of his baseball team's winning streak.

"Isolation? What's your game? I thought we wanted Arnold around everybody."

"We want precisely that. But recall that Arnold is most troubled when he knows problems exist and yet can do nothing about them - if we devise a way to suddenly segregate him from the majority of the class of PS118, I believe the result will be a multiplicative increase if effect on his hopefully wayward heart."

"Phoebe, he's spent ten years away. I think he can handle a little bit more."

"Ignorance has shielded him from the details of all the problems left unresolved. Arnold is at heart an optimist; I am sure he convinced himself that his presence was ultimately not necessary to Hillwood, and that everybody got along just fine."

"So we show Arnold that isn't the case, then keep him from being able to fix anything."

"Precisely."

Gerald leaned back against the headboard of his bed, folding his hands behind his small, carefully groomed afro. He started to nod as he began to digest the particular genius of her suggestion. Now all they needed was the right leverage. Of that, he had plenty.

"I think I see what you mean, Pheebs, but, what about this? I feel like we need to make this second phase a two-parter."

Phoebe tucked her silken black hair behind her ear and glasses. She was intrigued by Gerald's suggestion, and impressed that she found such a worthy partner in this venture in Gerald. He'd always been one for telling grand schemes; Phoebe was surprised and delighted that he was beginning to be as adept at planning them.

"Make your proposal, then," she smiled at him.

"I think we need to keep Arnold away from everybody - except Helga G. Pataki." Gerald smiled back at her, obviously pleased with himself.

"Interesting. You're suggesting that we saturate exposure to Helga, a known pressure point and, we are presuming, a weakness in his heart, while simultaneously removing him from any agency vis a vis the conflicts he encounters at the party between our old friends of PS118."

Gerald didn't seem surprised that she saw right through the heart of it.

"I'll call in favor number two with Pataki, and maybe the four of us spends a weekend at the Pataki beach house."

Phoebe's smile widened quite a bit. Gerald you are beautiful, she thought. She had no argument with this suggestion. It was brilliance, elegance defined. It accomplished all the desired goals for phase two, and had the added bonus of providing everybody with a much-needed vacation in the final weeks of Summer.

"Gerald...do I need to tell you how brilliant that is?" Phoebe just shook her head with a kind of puzzled joy. They had never communicated so effectively before. Somehow, the Gerald before her was ten times more attractive than the Gerald she remembered from high school.

"Yeah, at least one more time. And besides, we don't know if phase one will even work. We might be planning for something that will never happen."

"Yes. That is very true…" Phoebe felt the wind in her sails falter a little, and had to remember they were dealing in very high stakes.

She stared at the mess of the tea leaves at the bottom of her cup, wondering if one could really tell the future by the pattern of their scattering. Such augury would have made everything exceedingly simpler.

* * *

"We want to convince Arnold to stay in Hillwood," Phoebe calmly began.

"Yeah, I gathered that one," Helga rudely interrupted, chewing her piece of cherry pie. Somehow her anger still seemed like a viable threat, soaked as she was from the late summer showers.

"Well, the details of this plan are extremely particular. If steps are taken out of order or if we start improvising the whole operation unravels, to quite the dramatic conclusion." Phoebe felt that she was legitimately frustrated with Helga. It was rare that her best friend ever pushed her to this extreme level of consternation. Phoebe knew it was because Helga hated being in the dark about anything, especially things involving Ice Cream.

"Well it's all perfectly lovely that you and Geraldo cooked up some kind of cockamamy chess game to play with Hair Boy, but I deeply resent the fact that I am apparently one of your pawns." Helga was jabbing a piece of pie at the end of her long fork at Phoebe in dramatic intervals, emphasizing her point quite literally at the end of steel.

"Well to be fair, Helga, you are not a pawn, if I borrow your analogy. You are closer to the queen."

Helga's eyebrow arched up. Phoebe could tell that she liked that. One of the surest ways to get in with Helga was flattery; she couldn't help but enjoy praise and positive attention when she was used to never receiving attention at all.

"Keep talking, I like the sound of this." Helga continued to dig into the pie, her temper seeming to fade. Everybody visibly relaxed when she finally started to ease up.

"Gerald and I have worked together on what we think is the best strategy for convincing Arnold not only that he wants to stay in Hillwood, but that Hillwood needs him back."

"Yeah, like Pheebs said," Gerald interjected, "it's all about helping Arnold remember why he loved it here, and why most of our messed up lives went to the pot without him."

Helga chewed her pie slowly, glancing at Brainy. Phoebe wasn't sure what that look meant-the relationship between her best friend and her best friend's one-time stalker always puzzled her. She wasn't sure what to make of their bonds, though she could tell they ran deeply. She reminded herself to scrutinize Brainy a lot closer in the time she was in Hillwood working on the plan.

"Alright...this all sounds really neat and tidy and all, but, how am I the queen of the board? I'm assuming Arnold is the king."

Phoebe nodded. "Yes, you are correct. The game is won by capturing the king, so, in this respect, your analogy is accurate. We are attempting to capture Arnold such that he has no escape that does not itself lead to his capture. In this continued analogy, you are the queen because you are the most valuable piece, and the most dangerous to the opposition. You are the focus of most of the plans, because your relationship with Arnold is so..." Phoebe hesitated, grasping for the right word. "Singular."

"Groovy. Really, that's great, Pheebs, and props to you and Gerald for all the brilliance, yadda yadda yadda...only, Chess isn't a one player game. Who are you playing against?"

Phoebe stiffened in the booth next to Gerald. She hadn't anticipated Helga cutting through the analogy so acutely. She wasn't surprised, Helga was always at least her intellectual match, but her focus on the creative pursuits of art, music, and literature kept her brilliance focused further away from the raw logic puzzles Phoebe was used to.

"And for that matter, how does this," Helga slipped the piece of paper she got from Arnold on the table in front of them, "factor into the game?"

Phoebe and Gerald leaned forward to read what was on the paper. Brainy didn't move, apparently already aware of what was written on it.

"Christmas Day. We say goodbye."

Phoebe's eyes narrowed. So, they had their time limit now. Gerald looked at Phoebe with concern. This put a lot of pressure on their plans.

Helga chewed last piece of flakey golden crust of her pie, watching the two of them with what appeared to be casual interest. Phoebe was impressed that Helga managed to so thoroughly sequester the agony she must feel thanks to that note. Yet again, Phoebe was surprised by her long time best friend.

Phoebe sighed, closing her eyes for a moment, about to spill the whole sad tale to Helga. She felt Gerald's hand on her shoulder, looking at him for some support. He wasn't even looking at her.

"Arnold's not staying here. That's when he's going back - or moving on to his next destination." Gerald didn't even have to lie, even if that wasn't the full story. Phoebe was relieved.

"So you've got about five months left." Helga pushed the empty plate away from herself. She sounded tired, weary. As if she was already done with all of this, because she saw how it ended in advance, and was merely going through the sad motions for their benefit.

"Why don't we start with a brief summary of how your meeting with Arnold went," Phoebe began. "That way, we have a baseline of where to begin."

Helga didn't seem impressed or hurried to get to her story.

"Nah, I don't think so, Phoebe."

Gerald and Phoebe looked at each other, puzzled. Brainy pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose.

"Look, Arnold's got a life now. He seems happy. He has his mom and dad and an entire continent all to himself. We can't just decide to keep him."

Gerald scowled. "Now wait just a damn minute, Pataki, you said you were in earlier. What gives?"

"Look," Helga sighed, clearly wearied. "I want him to stay. Of course I do. Arnold's like the freaking glue that kept Hillwood from flying apart. You were all here when he left. You know how everybody just tore into each other. I've never heard of a more vicious pack of sixth graders, like littlehyenas with the scent of blood."

Phoebe remembered. It was bad. Without Arnold, the ever-positive, always helpful, only-sees-the-best-in-people hero around, things got exceptionally malicious. Rhonda basically went out of control with her cruel gossip, Curly totally lost touch with reality after a nasty breakdown and moved away, and without Arnold around to keep them humble, the bullies of PS118 grew to be legitimately nasty. The examples just continued: Harold and Big Patty were full blown street-dwelling crustpunks; Sid dropped out of high school to run a pawn shop, and Stinky became his hipster artist lacky; Nadine fled Hillwood in Highschool to get away from Rhonda; Eugene gave up on acting and drama and worked in a cheesy, sketchy magic shop, disgraced and humiliated by unfortunate love affairs. And then there was the mysterious figure behind it all, whom they never caught. Their teenage years could have been significantly more peaceful and typical had Arnold been around. Yet, not a single person that knew him would begrudge his decision to stay with his parents. Least of all Helga, Phoebe knew, though she was the one most heartbroken.

"And you know what?" Helga's voice dropped into that seldom-heard level of sincerity, the rarest of jewels from a Pataki. "If he stayed, I can't tell you if there would be a single happier person on the planet than Helga Geraldine Pataki." Her voice returned to its typical level of acidic sarcasm. "But I'm not going to manipulate him like this was a game. That's not how Helga plays ball. I step up to the plate and swing like hell; if I miss, I miss."

Phoebe had to respect the Helga sitting in front of her. Nine year old Helga would have no difficulty using all manner of subterfuge and obfuscation to manipulate Arnold into staying here. But this Helga was simply different. Principled. And she would not deviate from her principles, now that she was able to find them. Clearly, a softer touch would be necessary to convince her. Phoebe was puzzling over the best approach when Gerald interrupted her woolgathering with a typical Johanssen frank and straight-to-the-point question aimed at Helga.

"Just what is my man Arnold to you, anyway, Pataki?"

Phoebe held her breath. Gerald didn't know it, but that was a dangerous question in itself. Helga was what they called in Japan a tsundere; cold and hostile to the object of their affections before they were able to warm up and become sincere in their feelings. when challenged, a textbooktsundere like Helga was extremely likely to default to the dishonest, cold aloofness and hostility as a self-defense mechanism. She watched Helga's cheeks redden, and her tall, beautiful friend become visibly flustered at the question. Phoebe braced herself for a string of sailor-withering obscenities.

She was stupefied when Helga responded in quiet, reverent sincerity: "I'm in love with him, probably." Brainy looked away, his face red.

Phoebe couldn't believe that Helga has confessed, the act was so unthinkable it forced her to totally re-evaluate their tactical positioning in their plans. If Helga was owning up to her feelings, it could only be because she felt like she had nothing left to lose.

If she felt like she had nothing left to lose, it was likely because Helga had already given up all hope on Arnold. A significant problem.

Gerald nodded at her answer. "Yeah, I mean, I figured so. After the jungle thing, I just couldn't deny the evidence anymore. Well. If you love the guy, why not tell him?" Phoebe scolded herself for getting distracted; Gerald was heading down a path that had only a closed door at the end of it; she needed to help steer Helga away from anything that seemed final.

"Let's table that question for now, Gerald," Phoebe diplomatically interrupted. Helga gave her a thankful look, clearly not comfortable with the current topic. "Instead, let's tell Helga everything that we can at this stage," she began, eyeing Gerald with purposeful significance as she carefully chose her wording. "And bring her and Brainy up to speed, so that there's no confusion or misunderstandings or anyone jumping to conclusions." Phoebe prayed that Gerald caught the emphasis on the last bit.

Helga seemed satisfied with this. "I'll listen, but I can't promise I'll do anything other than what I've already agreed to. So don't get your hopes up."

Phoebe swallowed, hesitating to begin her explanation. Hope was all she had left at this point.

* * *

"Alright, so, what do we do about Lila?" Gerald ran his fingers along Phoebe's arm idly, thrilling her flesh at the simple contact. She lost herself for just a moment in the intimate gesture. It gave her butterflies, even as they lay nearly skin-to-skin like they were.

She brought herself to address his question, though she was loathe to focus on anything other than his large hands.

"Lila Sawyer is a problem," Phoebe agreed. She had to sit up, off of Gerald, in order to focus. They had been talking and planning and enjoying each other's company for the majority of the day and well into the late night. Now three teapots in, both of them were quite tired, but had worked through almost all the possible scenarios and come to agree on almost all necessary courses of action. Where they didn't agree, Phoebe made a mental note to simply out-maneuver Gerald. Lila was one of those areas she anticipated needing to out-maneuver him.

"That's an understatement, Pheebs. Sawyer is the problem."

Phoebe bit her thumb, nodding in agreement. For all their careful planning and excellent strategies, if they didn't neutralize or otherwise segregate Lila from the equation, there were going to be complications.

"Obviously, she cannot come to the beach house," Phoebe started with the most basic, understood information. "I am unsure if her presence at the party would be deleterious to our desired effect or not; it would certainly create significant friction between Arnold and Helga. Perhaps enough to jeopardize the whole plan."

"I just can't see convincing Arnold that she can't come. Even if she hasn't lived in Hillwood in years."

Phoebe nodded. Most of the class of PS118 that moved outside of the city limits was not coming. There were exceptions; Curly was making a pointto peel away from his brokerage firm in New York to flaunt his newfound wealth, for example. But Lila had moved back to the country home she originally left when they graduated middle school. She simply hadn't been a part of their circle of friends for very long, so Gerald hadn't used his considerable influence to keep tabs on her. Now, Phoebe wished she had stressed to Gerald to keep it up, just in case. They were deeply regretting that he had not, because they knew virtually nothing of her coming and going, her life after Hillwood. And how this happened with Arnold.

"It will be difficult. I think it is important to delay reintroducing Lila to the equation as much as possible. We know we have a limited amount of time, but we don't have an exact date. It's possible that Lila will elect to stay in her hometown until we get much closer to our deadline."

Even as she said it, Phoebe knew it was wishful thinking.

"I don't know, we're being awfully careful with everything else to get sloppy here, babe."

"Obviously, if our goal is to disrupt Arnold's decision and convince him to stay in Hillwood rather than return to South America," Phoebe began slowly, working out the solution as she spoke it. "Anything that segregates Lila from Hillwood and Arnold is worth exploring. I propose that we contact her directly.."

Gerald sat up on his bed, surprise obvious on his bearded face.

"Contact her? Aren't we trying to avoid her? What good is there in dropping her a line?"

Phoebe put her hand on Gerald's knee to calm him.

"Lila Sawyer, despite all the trouble she is causing, is perhaps the precise individual that we can fully disclose the entirety of our plan to without fear of any disruption or interference." Phoebe remembered Helga's story about her confession to Lila before the Romeo and Juliet performance. Lila had been happy to step aside that time. Phoebe was confident that tendency wasn't a fluke or whim.

Gerald blinked in the darkness, looking very tired. "Huh? Now you've really lost me, Pheebs. How in the world is telling Lila Sawyer our plan for Arnold anything but disruptive?"

"Her positive, helpful nature," Phoebe began slowly, "affords us the luxury of brutal, punishing honesty. With Arnold, we need to move him around carefully to expose him bit-by-bit to the different stages of the plan. With Helga, we have to strictly segregate wholecloth entire phases until the critical moment. With Lila Sawyer, however," she turned to face Gerald squarely. "We can count on her being not only willing to allow us our attempt, but will possibly wish to assist us."

"How do you figure?" Gerald watched Phoebe, hope and confusion clear on his face.

"She will want Arnold to make his decision with perfect clarity. If we announce our intentions, the odds of her telling Arnold are very high, but the odds are just as good that she will elect to encourage the events to play out. I feel like her sense of honor and destiny are weaknesses we can exploit."

Gerald scrutinized Phoebe. She felt slightly embarrassed by the attention.

"I don't know, Pheebs, it's bold, but maybe too bold. What if she just tells Arnold everything? He'll know the whole plan and then the jig is up."

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Gerald. We are being extremely careful in all the other factors. We can afford one reckless move, as a probe. I feel we have little choice; we either proactively attack and force a move, or we wait for the executioner's axe to fall at some unknown time."

"You're crazy." Gerald was grinning.

"No, Gerald, I just play a lot of Go." Phoebe giggled at his puzzled expression. Go was one of the ways she and her father had bonded during her teenage years. It helped her connect to her Japanese roots, and helped teach her many lessons in life. She had become quite strong at the game, but had little time to indulge in the hobby once she started University.

She was especially thankful she had the background in the world's oldest, most complex board game as she worked on this plan with Gerald.

"Okay...I think this is crazy, but I'll bite. When do we tell Lila?"

"As soon as possible. The sooner we have her explicit buy-in, the sooner we can begin preparing for the rest."

"I think I'm free next weekend. I can find out where she's shacked up. We can make a trip of it."

Phoebe liked that idea very much. However, the thought of another weekend, intimately alone with Gerald, executing their exciting subterfuge together, and in all probability spending multiple evenings together bothered her somehow. Phoebe stood up from Gerald's bed. It was important they address the evening's encounters and what they meant before they planned for some quasi-romantic interlude out of state together.

"Gerald...what do you feel about this?" Phoebe was usually exceptionally articulate. When she was attempting to communicate her feelings, however, she found herself less than eloquent.

Gerald needed more information. "Huh? I feel alright, I said I would go along with the idea. I think it's too risky, but," Phoebe held a hand up, stopping him.

"No, Gerald, about us." Gerald looked at her, his mouth shutting without further comment. His face grew troubled. It had been Phoebe that suggested they separate post graduation. Gerald was less than excited about the idea, to say the least, but had been finally willing to concede that they were better off as friends than ex-lovers.

Phoebe wrung her hands together at her waist. She was suddenly very worried that Gerald thought she was easy or slutty. They weren't officially in a relationship and she had allowed-no, initiated-a physical encounter. Did he see her as an easily accessible source of physicalrelief? Had she set a precedent, in his mind, that she was available for casual encounters?

Gerald stood up from his bed, moving across his room to walk past the very anxious, very worried Phoebe Heyerdahl.

He leaned against the closed door, crossing his arms over his chest. She didn't turn to look at him, but he began to talk just the same.

"Phoebe, you are gonna have to physically move me out of the way before I let you out of here, still single and not my girl."

Phoebe whipped around, looking at Gerald with surprise and scrutiny.

"So just try it, shrimp." He flashed her his characteristic grin, and Phoebe fell onto him with enthusiasm.

This, at least, makes sense. Phoebe sighed as Gerald embraced her, lifting her off the floor.

* * *

"So that's why you're having me play this party?" Helga sounded legitimately surprised.

"Basically," Gerald's air of casual self-confidence impressed Phoebe. They had just explained every nuance of the party to Helga. They hadn't begun to explain phase two or phase three. So far, Helga seemed to be on board. She had plenty of questions, of course, but had kept her probing friendly, even.

"Alright...I'm still in. I'll go to this party, and Orphan will even play it. Hell, Briany can DJ, we'll bring the karaoke machine, whole nine yards. I'll evendress up all sexy and blow little Arnoldo's football shaped head right off." Phoebe grinned as Helga continued to offer her support.

"On two conditions." Helga put a finger on the table, tapping the surface for emphasis. "Gerald's playing bass, and I want ten minutes guaranteedalone with Arnold. Non-negotiable, no interruptions. His little note pissed me off; if football head wants to say goodbye, I'll give him a send off he'llnever forget, on my own terms."

Gerald's eyes were wide. "Me? Playing bass?"

Brainy's eyes were wide as well. "Uh...ten minutes?"

Phoebe's smile was wide. "Done, and done."

"Waitaminute, Pheebs, I didn't agree to play with them," Gerald began to protest.

"Uh...ten minutes?" Brainy continued to voice his concern.

Phoebe reached across the table, her hand extended for Helga to shake. The two boys watched helplessly as Helga confidently, firmly took Phoebe's hand, and shook it hard to seal their bargain.

Phoebe relaxed internally. The pieces were in place. All they had to do now was play the first move.


	4. Chapter 4 - Most Love Comes Second Hand

A/N: A Gerald chapter, side order of Lila, Helga, and Arnold. One step closer to Arnold's secret. Some of the more astute of you may figure it out early! Thanks for sticking with me this long, there's so much more to come. Next one is all Helga!

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 4, Most Love Comes Second Hand

"If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion." - Noam Chomsky

* * *

"Try to keep up, Geraldo, we ain't got all day to wait for you to catch up," Helga snarled at Gerald. Gerald was non-plussed, as a calloused habit of abuse from Pataki dulled him ages ago to anything but her sharpest weapons. He straightened the bass in his grasp, shaking his head and lifting his shoulders once.

"Look, I haven't played since freshman year," Gerald tried to defeat Helga's nastiness with reason. It sometimes worked. "And then it was for my cousin's hip hop project. You gotta cut me some slack, I'm not used to girl rock."

Gerald was in Helga's apartment with Brainy and Stoop Kid, practicing with Orphan for the party coming in just two days. A lot was left to prepare at his frat house, but the urgency of learning a set of twelve songs was pressure enough to keep him in Helga's company for pretty much every available moment he had.

"Shit in seven stacks, where'd this kid learn to play?" Stoop Kid irritably rolled the kick drum pedals, rumbling the floor with his impatience. The former bully was not exactly who Gerald envisioned playing up on the stage when he suggested Orphan play, but Helga insisted that Stoop Kid was the only one who could manage on such short notice. And Gerald had to admit, Stoop could play drums. So far, he had no trouble at all following Helga's instructions to the letter, even finding ways to creatively improvise and flourish in ways that Pataki praised.

Gerald was a lot rustier. He had a valid reason, though. He didn't have a lot of time to practice bass guitar between baseball, partying, frat duties, classes, and planning a mastermind plot with his ex-now-girlfriend to get his best friend to dump Lila Sawyer and move back home. He was swamped.

"Let's just start from the top. I want to run through 'Tibetan Pop Star' again." Helga shifted her stance back to the mic they had set up in her living room. Gerald had to admit that they had really done a bangup job setting up a practice studio in their tiny apartment in fairly little notice. He and Brainy had spent a fairly awkward, silent afternoon stapling sound proofing foam to their walls, hanging heavy blankets over windows and doors, and running cables and cords from amps and pedal systems to the handful of outlets in the two bedroom flat. They'd only gotten a single noise complaint in two days, and that was because they had forgotten to close one of the bedroom windows and seal it up. They'd been able to get in some really solid practice, and Gerald, always confident, had no doubt he'd be able to perform to Helga's standards on stage.

She still made him nervous.

The song began, Helga's voice following the leading melody she plucked out, and Gerald waited for the right bar to join in, concentrating, but his mind still found ways to occupy itself with other urgent issues.

_I can't believe Lila went to South America after she moved._ Gerald hit the exact note he needed to on time, and saw Helga's glance of approval as they continued through the song. It was true, he was shocked to learn that Lila had left her hometown after graduation and went to Arnold. It was almost out of character for her, and certainly one of the last things he'd ever expect to hear that she'd been up to.

What really surprised him, though, was that Arnold had kept her a secret for the better part of three years. Arnold was mum on why. In fact, Arnold was uncharacteristically silent on the issue altogether, besides his rather sudden and dramatic _announcement _regarding the redhead_._

Gerald fell through the song's dramatic finale without any errors, finally having the hang of the jaunty bass line that followed the power-chord climax. When the song was over, he took a breath, reaching for a handkerchief to wipe his sweat-soaked forehead.

"Yo, what do you say we stop for a lunchbreak. I'm beat." Gerald needed a break. He needed to call Phoebe, first of all, and he needed to talk to Arnold. He hadn't seen his best friend since the first day he came to town, and he knew Arnold was busy catching up with Phil and Gertie, but he was still his oldest friend he hadn't seen in person in almost ten years. Even though time had managed to get in the way of how close they really were, he still imagined himself Arnold's life-long childhood bosom buddy, and wasn't about to let too much time pass without at least hanging out with him for old time's sake.

"Yeah, I could eat," Helga agreed. "Hey, Froboy, you're doing an alright job, for a total slacker. Against my better judgement, I'd say you just might managed to not embarrass me to death."

"Gee, thanks, Helga. You're ever too kind to little old me," Gerald gave his bitter reply. He had to admit to himself, even though Helga was bullish and unpleasant and never let an opportunity to humiliate or harass him go, she had her moments. He still couldn't see what Arnold saw in her ten years ago.

_Or what he sees in her now._ Gerald had to remind himself, Arnold had been extremely insistent the day he returned to Hillwood that he see Helga first. _Maybe he just needed closure_, Gerald reasoned as he drank from a bottle of tepid water Helga handed him. Brainy and Stoop Kid stepped out onto the balcony to hand roll some cigarettes, the unpleasant busker immediately opening his mouth to start talking trash about the party. Gerald never really liked Stoop Kid. He thought he was too mean, too cowardly, and too old to be worth his time. Arnold saw something in him Gerald didn't; a running theme in their friendship.

Gerald had decided the first day Arnold returned to find out what it was he saw in Helga, though. He needed to understand what made that attraction possible, if they were going to overcome the mountain that was Lila.

"Say, Pataki," Gerald began tentatively. He knew you had to be careful with her. She was older, and far less prone to actual physical violence than when they were elementary kids, but if you pushed Pataki too far she would let you know immediately, and in the least pleasant way you could imagine. "Can I ask you a kind of personal question?" Time to be bold.

"What is it Froboy?" she shot back with impatience. Helga was writing something down busily in a pink spiral notebook, barely paying attention to Gerald. He took it as permission to proceed.

"How come you never, I dunno, _moved on_ in ten years? Didn't you like, date some dudes in high school? Sow your wild oats and whatnot? How do you even _remember_ all that happened when we were in fourth grade?"

Helga stopped writing, looking up at Gerald with a scowl on her face. "Criminy, what _is_ it with everybody and this stupid gradeschool _crush_ I had ten years ago?" She huffed, visibly bothered. He saw that she wanted to be nasty by the twitch in her thick black eyebrows. Instead, she closed her eyes and sighed a deep, shaking sigh. She was calming herself down. Maybe she _had_ matured.

"How exactly was I supposed to move on when the obsessive little shrimp wrote me letters constantly for six years?" She set her pencil down and leaned on her knees. Gerald was a little surprised, she was opening her body language to him. _Him._ He and Helga had never gotten on well. At best, they had a begrudging respect for one another, a silent agreement to stop fighting around Arnold when he was still around. Once he left, the gloves came off in middle school, and a few vicious altercations later and they basically never talked at all in high school.

Gerald remained silent, his stoic and curious expression the bait he hoped he needed to goad her in further.

"I mean, yeah I went on a couple of shitty dates with nobodies not worth mentioning. Had some laughs, even had a good cry or two. Hell, Brainy took me to prom." She smiled a little at the memory and looked out at the balcony to Brainy, who was pretending to listen to Stoop Kid's rant about yuppies while he watched Helga. Gerald noticed the pink in her cheeks. _Interesting. Brainy and her have something going on deeper than we've considered. _Gerald would need to tell Phoebe as soon as he left for lunch.

"But, I've cared about that stupid kid since we were _three_ years old. It's not even something I have a choice in, really, it's a character trait by now. He's in my marrow." She paused, hesitating. He watched her features change, soften and then harden again, as she decided to open up to him. Gerald held his breath.

"It's like, he's out there, somewhere, and I will always think fondly of him and wish him well and _fight like hell_ to make sure he's got it good wherever he is, if I can. But, I mean, it's all in the distant past now," she shrugged, looking back up at Gerald with her eyebrows high. "That's the only reason I'm okay with talking to you about it, by the way. I know you won't do something extremely foolish like make fun of me anymore, 'cause we're not kids, and 'cause you know better. Besides, there's no point in keeping a story with an ending a secret. Arnold's all grown up. And he grew up far away from me and you and everybody else. He's not ours anymore; he's not mine,_ he never was_. So yeah, I care about him, in the same way I care about softball and music and poetry. Doesn't mean anything will come of it, or that it should."

"You could chase after him," Gerald suggested, wondering how much she knew about Lila. Gerald wagered she didn't know anything. He was about to find out.

"Yeah, that might have been an option in a fairy tale, Gerald." Her expression soured. She didn't know about Lila. "Don't make me regret telling you even one _iota_ of my feelings, or you'll regret making me regret."

"Nah, I'm serious, Pataki. I'm not making fun, if you feel anything special for the boy, you should chase him." Gerald felt like he had a duty to give her the advice Arnold never could. He tried to tell her exactly what Arnold would. He felt he owed it to Arnold to try. "You were kids when you put your heart on the line, but you're not kids anymore. Maybe he has old or new romantic feelings for you, maybe not. It could happen. But you get nothing by just 'wishing him well' and 'remembering him,' in fact I think that's kind of selfish."

Helga's face screwed into a pissed-off scowl, the mask she wore when something hit too close to home. Gerald had seen it plenty of times as kids, he had just lacked the emotional toolkit to interpret her behavior back then. Not now, though. Gerald was, with perhaps the sole exception of Rhonda Wellington Lloyd, the _best_ at unraveling social motivations in Hillwood. Years of gathering information in his little black book with the help of Fuzzy Slippers had given him remarkable insight. He knew Phoebe saw some of it when they worked on this plan together, but it had been hard for him not to tell Phoebe everything he knew.

Gerald was the coolest guy in Hillwood; he always played with a stacked deck and still made you think he'd fold every hand.

"Fuck off, Gerald." Helga stood up angrily, and Gerald watched her silently chew his advice and digest it. He knew he'd given her grade-A, unmistakably Arnold material. He knew what it would do to her. "And even if I did chase after him, don't you think it's a little foolish for a grown woman to get all over-the-moon loopy over someone she had a tiny crush on in _fourth grade_? I've grown, I've changed. I'm not the shrimpy bully from PS118 anymore."

Gerald thought she was remarkably similar to the bully from PS118 now, maybe so close to the mark it embarrassed Helga.

"You've been just as mean, nasty, and downright shitty to be around since you were three, Helga G. Pataki. Fuck you too if you don't wanna recognize that shit as the honest truth."

Helga smirked, her hand resting on her hip. He saw a look in her eyes, a spark of a challenge that crossed between them.

"Oh I'm just as tough as I used to be, tougher even. But the little girl you knew is gone; she died a long time ago. In a jungle. Alone."

Gerald remembered what happened to Helga immediately after Arnold left. Most of the kids in PS118 remembered. It was one of the reasons most of their group of friends scattered; watching a human being spiral into such a magnificent blossom of catastrophic self-destruction was really hard to do. Especially for ten year olds.

"You know this is the longest we've ever talked, Pataki? And even though it sickens me to admit, I see what Arnold meant all those times." Gerald gambled. He needed her to open up further. So far, he'd managed to get her to be especially frank with him. He was suspicious of it; it seemed too simple for her. Helga was a sealed vault buried under a continental plate at the bottom of the deepest ocean. Inaccessible. He knew for a _fact_ nobody on the planet had heard some of the stuff she'd been telling him, except maybe Phoebe. _Maybe Brainy, too,_ he corrected himself, remembering the discovery of their unique relationship.

"What the fuck do you mean, Froboy?" She seemed genuinely interested, a tiny mote of hope carried in her scratchy voice now raw from singing.

"Man, I _hated_ you for the longest time. You were such a monster to everybody, especially my best friend, I couldn't see a single _damn_ thing in you that was worthwhile." He shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. "And you know who, every damn time, would patiently correct me? Guide me gently, convince me somehow, _every time_ that you weren't so bad, deep down?"

Helga's already large, expressive eyes were held large and fearful on her face. He knew he had her; she knew in her heart what he was about to say, but was anxious to hear it.

"Arnold Shortman. Every time. 'She's not so bad deep down, Gerald.' 'Helga is a good person when she's calmed down.' 'I know she doesn't mean it.'" Gerald scoffed, genuinely feeling the disbelief he was affecting. "_Saint._ I don't know why or how he had the patience. Maybe he's the reincarnated Buddha, fuck, the guy is practically the living embodiment of Zen. But every time you fucked with our lives and pushed him down or coated him tip to toe in spitwads, he'd sigh real big, brush it off, and tell me to back off when I felt like clocking you one."

Gerald walked to the door, intent on leaving her with something big enough to chew on, something to get her where they wanted her for the party. He needed Arnold and Helga to at _least_ confuse each other enough to put the brakes on this whole thing. This much was necessary.

"After he left, years later, I was telling him about some shitty stunt you pulled our freshman year, I don't even remember what it was," Gerald lied. He remembered. It was written down. "And he started defending you like he always did. Guy's not seen you in five years, and he's still rushing to your defence against me, his best friend. So I ask him why."

Gerald put his hand on the door knob, fishing for his keys while he felt Helga's eyes riveted on him. He had her; time to chum the water for his shark.

"Arnold pauses," Gerald turned his head to look at Helga as he opened the door. "Then he says, 'Because we're orphans, Gerald. Together.'"

Gerald held eye contact with Helga. He saw the effect of the story in her big watery blue eyes. Maybe it was too much. Anything more would spoil the effort, he knew, so he shook his head and left the apartment, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

* * *

Mid-stride in a light jog, Gerald listened to the dial tone impatiently. Phoebe picked up right away.

"Gerald." She always answered his calls that way. He thought it was strange, but endearing.

"Pheebs, I'm doing it. I'm doing it!" Gerald could barely contain the excitement in his voice.

"I'm similarly excited to hear of your accomplishment, but if you enlighten me with specifics I will be able to share your jubilance."

"Helga, babe. I'm getting somewhere with her. I think this is going to work, I think we can get her to open up." Gerald turned a corner, his feet automatically taking him where his heart wanted him to go. Arnold was close. His pace picked up.

"That _is_ exciting news, then. What method has produced results?" Phoebe sounded like she was busy doing something as well. The both of them were always busy these days; they had a lot to prepare for.

"Just talkin' about Arnold. And liberally peppering in tidbits about my private one-on-ones with the man over the years. She's so thirsty for details she practically let me get away with murder."

Phoebe clucked her tongue. He knew she didn't like that they were manipulating Helga like this. Their friendship was as close as his and Arnold's; closer even, as distance had only recently separated them. But if Gerald didn't push, the party would fall flat. Everything had to be precisely right.

"Well, I'm not too fond of some of your chosen tactics, but I cannot argue with results. Keep me updated; where are you now?"

"Running to Arnold's real fast. I got a break from practice, so I'm not gonna waste it." Gerald's pace slowed down as he turned the corner and came to street the boarding house was on. No use in winding himself with the finish line in sight.

"Good; I've actually been quite concerned that our over-focus on this plan has detracted from our ability to enjoy his return. The odds of our success are tenuous, as you know. I've been thinking, and I think you should try to genuinely enjoy spending time with Arnold as much as possible. The plan is important, but, your friendship is far more important."

Gerald was touched. He always did love that sweet, sensitive side of Phoebe. Over the years in their friendship and relationships she had always surprised him with the level of sincerity and compassion she was capable of. He actually stopped walking, feeling compelled to tell her so.

"Hey, Pheebs," he looked up at the skyline of the buildings, fondly remembering all the times they ran around on the roofs as kids.

"Hm? Yes, Gerald?"

"I'm really glad we got back together. I really like you." He felt self-aware of his own body, his free hand not occupied by the phone fishing in his pocket nervously. She didn't respond right away, but he heard her sigh.

"I'm especially pleased as well, Gerald. I'll visit tonight. We can finish this conversation later." Her voice held the promise of something he knew he would enjoy.

"See you then, babe. I'm at Arnold's." Gerald put the phone in his pocket, stepping up the short stairs of the boarding house. He hadn't been in the building in years. He hadn't seen Phil and Gertie since his graduation. He recalled with fondness how they had shown up, Phil in his brown suit half moth-eaten and patched up, Gertie in the profound robes of a judge with a powdered wig. He smiled at the memory. Arnold's family had always been dear to him, but things had more significance when Arnold was back around. Taking a breath to steady himself, he lifted a hand to knock on the door.

* * *

Gerald sat awkwardly at the kitchen table, watching Phoebe assist Lila in making the three of them a pot of tea. Watching Lila move around the kitchen in her wheelchair was still jarring to Gerald, a shock of sad tragedy and an anxious wall of hopelessness he hadn't been remotely prepared for.

Lila, for her part, was her typical cheerful self about the situation. She had agreed to meet with them with excitement, and encouraged them to make the trip out to her family farm as soon as they were able.

"I am just ever so sure that we three have a lot to talk about," she had cryptically hinted. Gerald was sure she was talking about Arnold in a cunning, roundabout way. It turned out that she was, although only tangentially.

Phoebe and Gerald made the drive to her farm a week after their initial strategizing session. Now officially a couple, the drive had been really fun. They listened to Kanye and gossiped and talked about Helga, but mostly they made up for lost time together. The drive was sweet, a pleasant memory he could go back to now when he was so uncomfortable.

He felt terribly guilty. He felt like he should have known this, he should have kept tabs on her, should have pressed Arnold for more information. He was supposed to know _everything _about everybody; not knowing that Lila Sawyer was now in a wheelchair, partially paralyzed in her legs, and _selling_ the farm to go live with Arnold was a lapse in his responsibilities. A warm, sick feeling sat in his guts, and made it difficult for him to keep up pleasantries. He had said little. Phoebe noticed, making up for his silence with an over abundance of chatter. He wasn't sure which made Lila feel more awkward, but he could tell they were making her feel uncomfortable.

Lila rolled herself to the table with Gerald, sighing gently.

"I suppose you are just besides yourselves with curiosity. It's okay; you can ask." She seemed so _patient._

Gerald looked at Phoebe. She seemed like she understood the pleading look he tried to give her, and spoke for them both.

"Gerald and I came to visit because we heard from Arnold what the two of you were planning," she diplomatically began. "We are a little surprised at your condition, Arnold made no mention of any injuries you had sustained."

"Ah, no, I don't suppose he would be any manner of eager to talk about it." Lila's smile was slightly sad. Gerald felt ill to see it. They would have to totally abandon their plan, he felt. He couldn't get in the way of _this._

"Do you mind helping Gerald and I understand what happened?" Phoebe continued to be diplomatic.

"Not at all," Lila smiled sweetly, setting her teacup down daintily. Gerald could hardly believe she was the same plain girl he knew in grade and middle school. A lot had changed; beyond her injury, Lila Sawyer had grown up to be a rather voluptuous woman. She kept her auburn hair in a high bun, but had pretty, soft bangs swept over a forehead that he could tell was crossed with recent worries. She wore a green sundress, and Gerald could imagine no color more appropriate for her to wear. She was green in his mind, always, _vibrant_. Full of life's sweetness.

Part of him worried that he was romanticizing her injury. The rest of him couldn't deny what he was seeing: a beautiful young woman, that if he didn't know better he would call almost physically perfect.

"It was all rather silly," she began, looking down at the table in memory of things past. "When mama and papa passed in the flood suddenly, I was just terribly upset and alone. Arnold was ever so sweet and encouraging in his letters. When he proposed I visit, I was just ever so tickled and curious. Travel has always been just an oh so romantic dream of mine.

"He picked me up in Mexico City, looking rather dashing and tanned and seeming just especially worldly. I must admit Arnold has always been a special boy to me, but something different about him made him _especially _special then. It was easy to fall in love quickly with him, when he was so dashing and daring and sweet." Lila rest her cheek on her hand, looking into her teacup, fondly remembering.

Gerald could only imagine the shock of seeing Arnold as he was now after years of imagining a scrawny, shrimpy kid. Gerald had been floored to see him in photos, all tanned and strong and rugged looking. Lila must have been floored. _Helga will be shocked_, he thought. The plan returned to his thoughts, and he furrowed his brow as he listened to Lila tell her sad tale.

"We spent a few weeks in Bolivia, then Peru, and then he took me to San Lorenzo and I got to stay with him and Miles and Stella. His parents are ever so darling, but they were awfully prying into our affairs, Arnold's and mine. That's not to say that our _affair_ had started then, in fact that started much later. After, well, you know." Lila glanced down at her legs.

_We have to find out how far its gone._ Gerald was surprised to hear that nothing had happened until _after _the accident. Phoebe glanced at him, apparently thinking the same thing.

"One rainy dreary day Arnold was out gathering plants for Stella, and his guide comes running into camp, just terribly upset and concerned. Arnold had slipped and fallen somehow, and was out on a dangerous outcropping of rock, unconscious. Without thinking I ran after him with the guide, leaving most of my safety climbing gear behind."

Gerald saw where this was going. The guilt piled on.

"And," Lila sighed, gesturing to her legs. "I was able to get Arnold to safety, but, I couldn't manage to make the descent myself without this mess. It's ever so embarrassing; I feel positively a burden now."

Phoebe put her hand on Lila's. Gerald felt awkward watching the gesture. Lila smiled at the two of them, another slightly sad smile.

"Immediately after the accident, Miles and Stella and Arnold helped me get back home for immediate treatment. The doctors say I'm lucky, I've only lost partial use of my legs, and with physical therapy I might be right as rain again someday. Stella even thinks there's a miracle cure somewhere in the jungles for me."

Gerald and Phoebe looked at each other. He was sure she was feeling the same level of guilt that he was; how could they have spent so much time planning ways to take Arnold away from Lila, when they knew nothing about this? He felt awkward and obvious in front of Lila, who still managed to seem graceful and dainty despite everything.

"Lila, we-" Gerald began, his voice sounding apologetic. Phoebe put a hand on his, and shook her head. He closed his mouth, and felt a swirl of confusion why she interrupted him. Phoebe turned to Lila, and started to speak slowly.

"Lila, we owe you an apology," she began, and Gerald watched Lila widen her eyes in surprise. "We made this trip only because we heard from Arnold an entirely different story, and our intention was to try to get between you." Gerald felt his jaw hang open. What was she doing? Was she still going ahead with the plan? He watched with shock as Lila processed her apology, looking at the two of them with an annoyed, puzzled expression on her face.

"You see, the curious, secretive nature of the manner that Arnold has chosen to disclose this news to us gave us great cause for concern. It is singularly out of character for him to remain mum on something so significant; in fact, it is my suspicion that a guilty conscience was the only thing that prompted him to tell us _at all._"

Lila blinked in surprise, folding her hands in her lap passively. "What does this mean, Phoebe?"

"It means, Gerald and I came here with the suspicion that his heart isn't in this. You can surely forgive us our suspicions, but it seems now that perhaps we were mistaken." Now Gerald had _no_ idea where Phoebe was going with this. He watched Lila process the half-apology, the shock of the candid confession clearly affecting her. She was blushing in splotches on her neck and cheeks, physically affected by this assuredly hurtful news. Gerald wanted to get out of there fast.

Gerald jumped in his chair when Lila looked up at him with watery eyes and spoke in a calm, but quivering voice. "How did you intend to go about getting between us?"

"Wha? W-what do you mean?" Gerald felt himself stammer in a blank panic.

"Well, did you two have some sort of plan?" He thought he saw something in her eyes, something other than hurt. He peered at her, but Phoebe answered for him.

"We have a complex, multi-stage plan, designed to bring Arnold back to Hillwood permanently." Gerald whipped his head to look at Phoebe in shock again. He felt like he was merely a spectator in some horrible play, a Greek tragedy where everyone in the room would end up murdered dramatically. "It involves Helga," she added.

"Helga Pataki," Lila said, shaking her head and looking out the window of her quiet, quaint little farmhouse. "_The woman of letters_." Gerald heard more years of confusion, bitterness, and rivalry in those four words than he felt he would ever hear again.

Gerald wondered how much Lila knew about the letters, or what Arnold had told her. She knew more than nothing, which was enough to make him unsteady.

"Arnold spoke of her often, until the accident. In fact, Arnold hasn't been much of his oh so very charming self since then. I think he feels _terribly_ guilty; it's why I don't think you're wrong." Lila looked back at the two of them with a sad smile. "I don't think his heart is in it either. It's difficult for me to accept that, but I can't very well ignore the obvious much longer. After all, I was the one that put the idea in his head."

"What do you mean?" Gerald had yet to hear the story for himself.

Lila sighed, flattening out the wrinkles in her skirt. "Arnold asked me not long after the accident how he could ever repay me. For saving him. And I was feeling just ever so frightened and lonely and homesick, that I asked him to always stay by my side. He took the request oh so seriously, and quite literally."

Phoebe nodded, sipping her tea. Gerald had no idea how she could drink so calmly as bombshell after bombshell kept dropping. "If you suspect that Arnold's heart isn't in it, why accept?"

Lila smiled bright and large, shrugging her shoulders. "Because I'm in love with him. It's what I want, very much so."

Gerald felt like that was an oddly selfish response from Sawyer. "Even if his heart's not in it?"

Lila shook her head, "No, _not_ if his heart's not in it. That's...why I think you should go on with your plan." Gerald felt his stomach drop. How _awful._ He was going to try to tear a crippled girl's life-long love from her, at her insistence. It felt monstrous, an unthinkable sin against a friend. How could she ask this of him and Phoebe? Even if it was what they came here to do, he still wondered if he had the grit to do it.

"Lila, no offense, but don't you think it's a bit cruel to you? I mean, we'll be trying our hardest to take Arnold away from you. Forever." He had to be honest with her. He wouldn't be able to look at himself in the mirror later if he was anything less.

"It's awful, terrible, and extremely nasty of_ me_ to ask you to do this, Gerald." Lila scrunched her nose up, not bothering to hide her bitterness. Gerald felt it was a special violence she committed to turn this awful thing against herself, to command their guilt away and lash Arnold's albatross to her own neck. "But, if you do everything you can and he still comes home to me and we start our new lives in San Lorenzo, I'll be able to do it with a clear conscience. It will mean despite all that happened in his past, I am his future. I can't imagine anything ever so much more perfect than that. It would be a gift. So, I'm terribly sorry to have to make you do this, I am ever so awfully sorry. Consider it a selfish request from an old friend."

Phoebe sighed, and Gerald felt himself lump up a wad of emotion in his throat.

"I know what it seems like," she continued, "but I truly believe that I'm not _always_ going to be like this. Arnold isn't convinced, and he just looks at me so _sadly_. It's ever so awful, and I simply can't bear it. If you're brave enough to challenge his heart on my account because I'm too much of a silly lovesick little girl to do it myself, I'll lean on you for help." Lila tried to smile at them, but a tear forced itself out of her eyes, and was quickly followed by more.

Phoebe held her hand, squeezing it hard. The three old friends sad there like that for some time, listening to the patient clicking of Lila's wall clock and the gentle outpouring of misplaced remorse. Finally, Phoebe cracked the shell of silence. "Then we'll do everything in our power for you. And for him. The odds are good you won't have him anymore. I suggest that you make the most of the time you have between now and his planned visit."

Lila nodded, wiping her cheeks with her fingers. "Ahaha, don't worry, I will. I have ever so many romantic plans for my Arnold. He won't forget this month." She smiled through her sadness at them, and Gerald had no idea how to feel.

"Good luck, you two. I hope he loves me enough that your plans go up in smoke. But don't you slouch on me. I want an honest man or no man at all."

Gerald clenched his jaw, nodding. "Don't worry, Lila. We won't. Arnold won't know what hit him."

Phoebe grabbed his hand for purchase under the table, and he squeezed it as hard as he possibly could. Their agreement was clear. It was their solemn duty to keep Arnold.

* * *

Gerald was wheezing in the bone-crushing hug, laughing between gasps for air as his surprisingly strong best friend tried to shake the life out of him in a massive embrace.

"Aiight, aiight! I'm dyin'! Lemme down!" Gerald laughed, caught off guard by the surprising strength and vigor in Arnold.

"Oh, sorry Gerald!" Arnold set him down with a big grin on his broad features, clapping his hand in a squeezing handshake and slapping Gerald's opposite shoulder eagerly. "It's really great to see you! How long do you have?"

Gerald pulled Arnold's handshake into their secret version of the same, waggling his thumb opposite Arnold's in their often-practiced way.

"Maybe thirty, forty minutes. Gotta gig to return to - frat house stuff." Gerald had not told Arnold about Helga's band, or his participation. That wasn't in the plan.

"Time enough! I'll get Grandpa, he's been dying to see you." Arnold strode quickly into the kitchen, disappearing for a second.

Gerald had time to look around the boarding house, remembering the unique smell of those old walls, the creak of the floorboards, and the strange, almost year-round dense humidity of the first floor. He flexed his toes in his black converse, momentarily remembering grasping the thick wool rug underfoot in the entryway with childish, bare feet. It was a good memory.

"Issat Gerald? Hooboy, lookit how tall he is!" Phil rounded the corner, walking with a cane but still shockingly spry for 91. Gerald smiled wide at his old friend, walking to shake his hand warmly.

"Grandpa Phil, it's wonderful to see you. Eat any _raspberries_ lately?"

"Oh you know me, a Shortman can never stay away from the darn things. How's your cute little Asian friend with the glasses?"

"Phoebe is well, Phil. She's off at university now, but we just got back together."

"Ah, young love! It's a beautiful thing, just be careful or you'll end up a papa! It's what I've been telling Shortman here about his cutey in the chair with the big bazookas!"

"Lila, Grandpa." Arnold corrected his grandfather with a wince, an embarrassed smudge of shiny red on his very tan features. Gerald had to admit, Arnold looked like a sun god these days. Years of mostly physical labor out in the sun drenched equatorial jungles had given him a permanent bronzing to his skin, but in a way that lifted the impression of health and vigor to the surface. His easy green irises were ringed by eyes that had managed to grow little crows feet. His hair, longer than before, was roughly tousled and sun-kissed, crashing waves of almost silvery blonde highlighting within his normally golden straw locks. A thick, even field of fine, shining golden facial hair spread under his nose around his jaw, giving him a rugged and adult look. Gerald had done a double take the first time he saw his friend again, the transformation was that impressive.

Phil nodded, waving his free hand to shoo away the annoying business of remembering names. "Well, I'll let you two catch up. Pookie's got to have her afternoon herbal remedies." Arnold helped turn Phil around, and Gerald watched the wizened old man positively zoom off to go spend time with his wife. He hoped he was half as much in love with Phoebe as Phil was with Gertie.

Arnold was watching him too, though he had a much different look on his face. Concern.

"Grandpa's not getting around as well these days," he sighed. "I don't know what is going to happen if he falls again."

Gerald smiled at his friend supportively, clapping his shoulder. "I'm sure Phil's gonna outlive us all, Arnold. Let's hit your room."

Arnold nodded, leading them up the stairs. "You and Phoebe back together huh? That's great!"

"Yeah. It just happened. Bout a month ago. We're gonna make it work, distance or not." Gerald swung into Arnold's desk chair when they arrived in his room, Arnold closing the door behind them for privacy.

"I'm happy for you. I know it'll work out, some things are just meant to be."

Gerald saw an ugly opportunity. He remembered what Phoebe said, but couldn't ignore the chance to add power to the payload of their plan.

"Just like some things aren't quite meant to be, huh?"

Arnold smiled bitterly, nodding. He crossed the small room in three strong strides, flopping his body onto his small old bed with a defeated sigh and the protesting strains of a tiny spring mattress. "I really thought something would happen when I saw Helga again."

"You can't beat yourself up man. And it's better nothing _did_ happen, right? Ain't you spoken for, and thoroughly now?" Gerald knew he had to tread carefully. Arnold was smart, and wise to Gerald's tricks. Most of them.

"It's complicated, Gerald, you know that. And besides, Helga just seemed _off_ somehow. I can't put my finger on it."

Gerald rolled his eyes. "Mm, mm, mm! My man Arnold Shortman has got _no_ idea the stupefying effect his Marlboro man looks have on the ladies, does he?"

Arnold scrunched up his round nose at Gerald. "Marlboro man? Helga wasn't stupefied by my looks, Gerald."

"Then she's blinder than when she April fooled you. I'm telling you, seeing you for the first time is a _shocker_, man. Girl wasn't in her right mind, or I'm not the coolest guy in Hillwood."

It seemed to make Arnold think. _Come on man, don't be this easy, _Gerald inwardly pleaded. _Don't be this easy on me, after all our years. _Gerald genuinely felt like he wanted Arnold to challenge him. Anything less felt like it was somehow _ignoble._

"Maybe at first, though I _doubt_ it. No, Gerald, she meant what she said. 'The past is the past,' that's pretty definitive. It's all the answer I needed, I guess."

_Dangerous. Always lead him down the path to Helga by a leash, even when you point him away with your hands and eyes. _Gerald changed his tactics. "What if you got a different answer, though? What if Helga G. Pataki, queen _bitch_ of Hillwood, looked you in the eyes and said, 'Arnold Shortman, I am hopelessly in love with you and never want to be apart.' How could you _HANDLE _that kind of shock?! I'd croak dead on the spot." _Attack her, force him to defend._

"She's not a bitch, and don't ever use that word, please. It's a nasty word used only to hurt women." Arnold sounded serious. Gerald was surprised, but remained passively attentive. "Helga's just like me deep down, we just express ourselves in different ways. I _understand_ her, better than anyone. If she'd said all of that, then, I dunno. It would be different. But she didn't. So it's over, time to grow up and move on."

_Extreme danger! _"Move on to Lila, you mean. It must be nice, having that sweet thing on the side as a backup." _Careful, Gerald, careful!_

"Gerald, what's gotten into you?" Arnold seemed legitimately offended, standing up from the bed. "Why are you going after them like that?"

"I'm not man, I'm just saying what they are probably thinking. You told Helga about Lila, right?"

"No, not exactly. Not at all, actually," Arnold screwed his face up painfully at the memory of Helga in the coffee shop. "It just never seemed to come up organically."

Gerald put on a shocked face. "What?! Arnold, brother, you gotta _tell_ her. She's probably thinking of ways to apologize and confess to you, man!"

Arnold's eyes went wide. Gerald watched his oldest friend process the memories of all the times Helga had initially pushed him away, only to warmly and sweetly help him or compliment him later. "Oh, _fuck_, dude. What if you're right?" Arnold turned to his friend, looking lost and a little bit overwhelmed. "She used to do that hot-cold routine all the time as kids. I didn't even consider that."

Gerald had the seed planted. When Helga collided with him at the party like a meteor, Arnold's heart would be softened enough to receive the blow. "That's some heeeeeavy stuff, Arnold. You got Lila wheeling around her farm house expecting your safe return; you can't be going back home to her with unfinished business in Hillwood. You gotta tell her at the party."

"The party? Helga's going?" Arnold sounded genuinely hopeful. _It would kill Lila to hear the way he said that._

"Of course she is, man, girl's part of PS118. No way I'd dare exclude her, even on your account." _And she is the lynchpin of the entire plan, _Gerald mused.

"You're right. Even if Helga's planning an apology, I've got to tell her about Lila. And even if she isn't, she deserves to know. It's the right thing to do."

"Yeah, buddy, it sure is." _And it's why you'll fall for the trap, old friend, _Gerald thought with remorse.

Arnold was pinned to destiny by The Right Thing. His years as an orphan had moulded him in the opposite ways Helga's decades of parental neglect had shaped her; Helga had grown to know that nothing in life turned out the way you hoped, and that the only one who had your back was yourself, while Arnold lived rejecting the sadness of that reality, instead embracing the impossible dreams and hopes, and relying on the kindness in others he believed was always present beneath the surface. It's what made him so special. It's what let them do this to him.

Gerald felt a familiar bile rise in his belly, recalling the sour sickness he was left with after meeting Lila. Manipulating his best friend like this was the grossest, most callously vile thing he could imagine. And yet, he knew it was totally necessary, because even though Arnold was a good man, he wasn't always right. He would ruin not just his own life, but maybe two others, blindly chasing Rightness and ignoring the truth in his own heart.

As Arnold began excitedly retelling one of his exciting jungle adventure stories to change the subject, Gerald weighed the moral costs within himself yet again, carefully measuring the gravity of doing nothing versus following the plan. Even now, feeling sickened to his stomach, he knew the answer.

They would keep Arnold; it was the only way.


	5. Chapter 5 - Meteor, Make Me Young

A/N: Apologies for the delay! I wrote this entire chapter once, hated every line, and deleted it all. I had to get it right. It's a Helga chapter, and she's the star of the show after all. Please bear with me as we explore Helga's past, present, and future together with the help of a mirror, Dr. Bliss, Rhonda and Lila. Please enjoy my private little interpretation of my favorite character, and R/R as always.

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 5, Meteor, Make Me Young

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

* * *

Within every crack and cranny of her heart, Helga knew a sort of life-defining love that most of us only ever experience second hand in passionate works of art. It suffused her very essence, pumping her heart with blood, gasping air into her lungs, willing her limbs to moving, giving speech to her thoughts, defining the very boundaries of who she was as an individual. Helga stumbled upon, to her hapless torment, the very thing that propelled Van Gogh to eat yellow paint and cut off his own ear in manic love sickness, the precise alchemical mixture of love that haunted sages of Persia seeking to transfigure gold from clay. She had within her a miracle, and it was sacred, and she kept it tended in secret ways, kept secret even from herself. Helga was helpless against it, a mote of yellow against a vast sea of crimson and fuscia, a galactic nebula of stellar light. She could do no more to shake the roots of it free from her foundation than she could swallow the moon. Even when she spent years denying it, hiding herself from it with terrifying experiences, cheap thrills, sad films, red wine and sleeping pills, it glowed within her, humming the precise harmonic frequency of her very bones. Its vibrations defined the rate at which her atoms shed electrons and spiraled into half-life decay. Her love _was _her.

Helga was currently in the sad state of full acceptance and awareness of how trapped and helpless she was, and the rawness and exhilaration of the sensation of _loving_ had her bent over a toilet in Gerald's frat house at the big party, the wracking sounds of a stone-cold-sober nervous puke nearly drowning out the pounding rhythm of the house music Brainy was meticulously mixing.

Her legs shook under her. She rest her forehead on the toilet, hugging the bowl for purchase. _Thank you for being cool on my head, toilet,_ she reverently thought. _I'm sorry for filling you with puke._ She held her eyes shut, feeling another wave of nausea hit, roll over her like a hot press, and pass on, leaving her shivering in the too-cold bathroom.

"Oh _fuck _how am I gonna do this," she pleaded with the empty room. Beneath her, her black leather pants shined taut against her legs. She followed the muscular swoop of her thigh, following the long limb to its terminal point in a pair of uncharacteristically feminine pink pumps with little black ribbon bows on the toe. She loved these shoes, they were the girliest thing she owned. She bought them in secret, and hid them in the back of her closet where her secret things habitually went. Now, she wore them shyly, feeling awkwardly tall and _leggy_ with them hoisting her butt up in the tight black leather jeans she squirmed into. At least the pants were comfortable; a staple for her shows, decorated at the hips with DIY rivets and studs, they were seemingly _painted_ on her athletic lower half.

She sat up from the toilet, flushing the stress she'd expelled and rising to sit on the edge of the garden tub next to her. For half a second, a wave of cold sickness wobbled her off balance, and she almost fell backwards fully into the tub, before her steady hand on the toilet saved her.

_Take it easy, Helga, old girl. You've got a twelve song set list and ten heavenly, hellish minutes alone with him to get through._

Helga bit her lip, her light speed imagination immediately filling her thoughts with _precisely calibrated _scenes of everything that could _possibly_ unfold in ten minutes. She tasted the hint of pomegranate and mint in her deep crimson lip stain for a brief moment, the thought _I hope he likes pomegranate_ instantly sending a warm, splotchy flush of embarrassment across her neck and collarbones.

Helga regarded her flushed face with skepticism and concern. She had spent an unusual amount of time focusing on her appearance to get ready. Beyond selecting the pink babydoll tshirt with a glittery black Baphoment boldly emblazoned across the front, opting to go with her laciest, blackest bra, and carefully dividing her hair into two perfect ponytails, Helga had also spent time straightening her bangs, detailing her eyebrows into bold, powerful shapes, and carefully selecting the makeup she would wear. She normally didn't wear much; it wasn't her style to slather herself with makeup, and she usually only stuck to a simple concealer and dark eye shadow. She regarded her large, expressive blue eyes with awkward awareness, unsure if the little catlike lines of eyeliner and smoky-red eye shadow was overmuch, or if the little embellishments of gold glitter she lightly dusted under her eyebrows was a tasteful addition. She'd spent the better part of the afternoon watching YouTube makeup tutorials, struggling and snarling with her unpracticed hands when they were clumsy in applying the expert techniques she wished to emulate. Somehow, she'd gotten it done. She recalled Phoebe's audible gasp when she saw Helga, felt again the embarrassed eye of scrutiny from Phoebe as it washed over her.

"Is it too much?" Helga had asked, holding her arm awkwardly, the studded black wrist bangle digging slightly into her wrist.

"Helga, I posit that you have a hidden talent for makeup artistry," Phoebe rushed. "You have somehow managed to look both flashy and toned down simultaneously. I am envious of your restraint and attention to detail."

Helga smiled at herself in the mirror, somehow bolstered by the little memory of her best friend's comment. Maybe Phoebe was right; Helga had struggled to get where she was, but the effect was precisely what she intended. She had just enough color splashed on her face to excite the senses. She was silently thankful that her recent binge-eating junk food hadn't resulted in any breakouts in her skin. Helga had trouble with her skin, even now, and whatever conspiracy had resulted in her clear complexion for the part must have been divine influence. She felt that it surely had to be.

_Maybe this won't be a total disaster._ Helga sat on the rim of the tub, one leg bouncing nervously in cadence to the pulsing rhythm of the song Brainy was currently mixing outside. _I wonder how he's doing,_ she thought, her concerns automatically going to her too-quiet friend and roommate. He never expressed anything but calm, quiet acceptance to Helga. She sometimes wondered what he was really thinking. She knew he was still in love with her - she'd have to be blind not to see it. But he had never made a move on her, and she'd never encouraged it. She was comfortable with the boundaries they'd set.

_If this works, will Brainy still want to live with me?_ She couldn't imagine that he would be cool with her bringing Arnold home after she'd successfully seduced him. Yet that was her precise intention, and her desired end result. Going home with Arnold. The thought made her dizzy, made her stomach flop around within her guts and dredge up all her previously calmed nervousness and stressful worry.

She hadn't made the decision to seduce him lightly. In fact, it was only recently, thanks to Dr. Bliss, that she had gotten anything in her mind for those ten minutes other than a powerful, life-time delayed confession. Now she'd use every weapon of femininity available to her, aimed directly at Arnold's heart and loins without mercy. The mere concept sent her blood clicking through her veins. She felt _high_, she felt _drugged_ by the sensations of anticipation and physical need for him. She had never allowed herself to feel these things for him this intensely. Sure, she'd had her silly teenage fantasies, and was well acquainted with her vibrator, Rusty, but the actual intentional design to commingle Arnold with herself had never been a fantasy she'd allowed herself the indulgence in.

And now she was going to toss the dice and see how they fell.

"Breathe, Helga, _breathe._ You can do this. He's just a boy." She repeated the mantra to herself, standing from the tub to pace the little bathroom she had trapped herself in at the party. It was six paces long, two paces wide. She'd counted them out, the repetitive action bringing her focus when her mind was such a chaotic mess.

"It'll be easy. He's just a stupid boy, and you're mega hot, and you'll knock his socks off." She reasoned with herself, imagining colliding with him like a comet, her body melding against his immediately. It made her stammer and stutter. "A-and you'll j-j-just take the rest off of him t-too." _Whoa. Arnold naked. With me._ She got dizzy at the thought, and had to lead on the bathroom counter for purchase, facing the mirror and unable to look at herself.

_Do I deserve that? _She had to ask herself the question. Helga wasn't sure she was worthy of such an experience. Was anyone worthy of touching the surface of the sun? _It will dirty him._ She frowned at the poisonous thought. She hadn't felt _clean_ in years. She just regarded herself with a helpless acceptance. Helga G. Pataki was corrupted, fucked up, and a mess. Even if she could accept, with Dr. Bliss' help, that she loved Arnold and that it was okay, she still couldn't bring herself to accept that he would feel anything for her except the expected basic human male response to female stimuli.

_It will dirty me._ If she allowed Arnold to be with her, then, knowing that he would only be feeling her with his genitals, and not his heart (she wouldn't accept that as even a remote possibility), did that make her a _slut_? Was she cheap, by letting Arnold _use_ her just for her own silly desires? The thought made her sick. This was a disaster already. Helga felt like the ground was going to swallow her up at any moment, a massive yawning chasm would suddenly sinkhole the entire bathroom and all of its occupants, erasing her forever. She begged for it to be true, she pleaded with the air with her eyes to make her disappear.

A knock at the door brought her back to the party, with the pulsing rhythm of music, the sounds of people shouting and cheering, the stale hot smell of beer and sweat and bodies.

"Hold on a second," Helga breathed. She wasn't ready to go out there yet. She needed more time to prepare. She needed another day, maybe, or a week. Give her another year, and she might be ready to face Arnold.

_When did I get so cowardly?_ She suddenly thought. Helga G Pataki used to be a fearless force of nature. In High School. she was voted the prom queen just by the sheer force of her personality. She smiled, remembering with relish Rhonda's outrage when Helga smiled and waved at her from on stage, wearing _her_ tiara and holding _her _flowers. People respected her, people _feared_ her. Helga hadn't merely withered away when Arnold left. She'd receded within herself, found that she was missing pieces, and rebounded back outwards twice as sharp and hard as before. Why, then, was she feeling so brittle, so vulnerable now?

_It's because he is the missing pieces you lost. He's back now, and you're afraid of not being able to find the missing pieces in time. You're afraid of losing him again._ Helga took a shaking breath, forcing air through her lungs.

The knock came again, more aggressively.

"I said just a fucking second! Criminy, you must not be fond of that hand you keep pounding the door with, 'cause I'm half a moment from coming out there and tearing it off!" There was the old fury. It steadied her, somehow, to feel something other than panic, even if it was blind rage at an anonymous intruder.

She heard Phoebe's voice.

"Helga, it's Phoebe. I lost my purse. It's imperative that we recover it _immediately._ The purse contains my cell phone, which has the precise timetables and instructions for the night's events. Arnold's almost arrived; we need to find the purse before he gets here."

Helga sighed. Phoebe. Despite being the smartest person she'd ever met, Phoebe had always had a slightly sloppy, hapless side. It had been exposed when she broke her leg, and when she cheated.

"Just a minute, Pheebs. I'll be right out and we'll find it together." Together. Helga chewed the word, recognizing that she was not alone in this. Practically everyone at PS118 had jumped on board when Gerald sent out his instructions for the party. Everybody knew their role, everybody had their part to play. And she could rely on the fact that most of them would fuck it up, but Gerald and Phoebe had planned for that, too.

Really, they'd anticipated everything. _Everything except for when you seduce Arnold._ She blushed at the thought, but the micron of steel resolve she'd found kept her steady. _But they don't have to know about that._

Helga reached into her pocket, pulling the soft, rolled-up fabric of her ribbon free and unfolding it in her hands. _So much has happened since that day._ He always liked her ribbon. He mentioned it specifically when he saw her again for the first time in ten years. She took a breath, and reached behind her head, tying it behind her bangs into a big, folded bow that rest between her pigtails. Taking one last look at herself, correcting her bangs and pushing her tits up for inspection, Helga wrapped up her private pep talk with herself.

"You're a fucking hurricane. You're a typhoon, a force of goddamned nature. Helga G. Pataki, your love is cosmic, and invincible, and you have unlimited strength. Fuck this party up. _Fuck this party up._ This is your night."

She sighed once, a long, heavy exhale carrying the last of her jitters away. "And you've been waiting ten years for this moment. It's time to tell Arnold how much you love him."

She was satisfied. Helga opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the press of the crowd with Phoebe to start hunting down her purse, her mind chewing through the details of the night ahead of her.

* * *

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice, doc," Helga slumped into the couch in Dr. Bliss' office, feeling physically and mentally drained. She'd practiced with Gerald and Brainy until their fingers blistered, and folded paper cranes and scanned letter after letter into her MacBook with Phoebe until the blisters bled and cracked. Every available second was devoted to the frightening anticipation of the party the next day, and her planned confrontation with Arnold. She was ramping up to a panic attack when she called her psychologist, desperate for help.

"Of course, Helga. It's been a long time since you called me needing immediate help outside of our monthly visits. Why don't you tell me what's going on?" Dr. Bliss sat in her chair passively, the lovely woman always a patient and friendly source of attention for Helga. She always looked forward to their appointments, and never missed a single one. Even when she had spiralled out of control when Arnold left, she'd made her appointments without fail. In fact, she made more of them, sometimes visiting daily. She just needed the kind of womanly care and attentiveness she got from Dr. Bliss that wasn't ever going to come from anywhere else.

"Well, doc, it's kind of like this. Arnold's come back to Hillwood." Helga put her palms on her eyes, squeezing until she saw colors light up against the black blanket of her eyelids.

Helga heard Dr. Bliss sputter as she sipped her coffee, setting the cup down hastily. Helga peeked at her with one eye, a little surprised her normally unflappable doctor would startle.

"Ya alright, doc? You really shouldn't be the one surprised by that, ya know."

"No, I'm sorry, I know. How sloppy of me. I was just happy for you for a moment." Dr. Bliss smiled at Helga. Helga loved that feeling. It made her shy, so she got surly.

"_Happy _for me? It's just about the worst possible thing that could have happened."

"Is that how you really feel, Helga?" Dr. Bliss sounded skeptical. It always bothered Helga how astute and insightful she could be, especially when it came to Arnold.

"_No_, it's not how I really feel. Of course it isn't. I'm beside myself, totally loopy gaga nuts! I can't believe he's back. It's been _ten years_, I had gotten so used to his absence that I just took it for granted. I'm just a tiny bit overwhelmed, to be honest."

Dr. Bliss nodded while she listened. She never took notes with Helga. Helga appreciated that, because it gave her the illusion that her doctor never wrote anything she said down. She knew that somewhere there were observational reports and whatnot for insurance purposes, but Helga liked feeling that her sessions with Dr. Bliss were too intimate to write down.

"I think that is perfectly normal and natural. After all, a young man you have cared deeply about and who left at a critical point in your childhood has suddenly returned to your life. It must feel quite nostalgic."

Helga sat up quickly, alert and excited. "Yes! That's exactly it, nostalgic. It's like everything is all sepia toned and idyllic now. I see the town in an almost new light, except it's the _old_ light. Like from before he left. Hell, I even felt like calling Miriam."

Dr. Bliss raised her eyebrows, folding her hands in her lap. "The desire to contact wrinkles in our past is especially strong when we are allowed an opportunity to revisit it. Did you make contact?"

Helga chewed her lip. She didn't want to talk about Miriam today, she just wanted to talk about Arnold. "I did. It was weird."

"How did it make you feel to contact your mother? If I recall, you haven't spoken to her since last year. Christmas, wasn't it?"

Helga frowned at the memory. Brainy had convinced her to call Miriam on Christmas Day. He'd patiently looked at her the way he did, and set her phone in front of her, just saying "Miriam." Helga had stared at her phone, holding onto her chair for stability and purchase. Finally, she had called. Miriam had been drunk, and a sad mess. She was so excited that Helga called she sloppily slurred about every incident in her sad, mundane life until she had started to uncontrollably cry. Helga had been sick to her stomach, and made excuses, and ended the call. She didn't make contact again, until last night.

"Yes, and it felt weird. She's doing better, I just..." Helga gathered the air in front of her into a sigh, remembering last night's call. "She's still drinking. She wasn't as sloppy as Christmas but _how could she be_. But she is still making her damn _smoothies _and forgetting things. She thought I called because it was my _birthday_. I tried talking to her about things, but I just got off the phone as fast as possible when the waterworks started."

"It was very brave to challenge your comfort zone like that, especially when you feel so overwhelmed by Arnold."

Helga wasn't so sure. "You think so, doc? It felt like a little kid running home to mommy because the boy she liked scared her."

"Mm, that might play a small part in it. But remember, Arnold is resurfacing a lot of emotions and memories. The desire to tie up loose ends will be especially strong right now."

"Yeah well there's _one_ frayed goddamn knot I'd like to tie off, and beaucoups fast. This Arnold problem is making me fucking loco."

"I can tell. You're usually less colorful with your language in our visits."

Helga blushed genuinely embarrassed that the woman she liked and respected so much caught a glimpse of her foul mouth.

"Ah, shit, sorry doc. I, uh, cuss like a sailor. When I'm not here, I mean. I'm stressed out, it's going to bleed into our conversation. Apologies in advance,"

"It doesn't offend me, Helga. In fact, it's a useful indicator of your current psychological state. You must be very stressed and strained to let your standard street behavior inform our session. You are usually restrained."

There was that sharp insight Helga loathed and relied upon so much. Helga pondered something for half a beat, and then loaded her ammo.

"Hey doc, how come you never got married?" Helga had been saving that one for a special occasion. She felt that Arnold merited the moment.

"Well," Dr. Bliss began hesitantly. "That's a big question. I suppose it's because the opportunity never arose, and because I am usually very busy with my work."

"Yeah but I know you've had a guy or two since we started." Helga kept her snooping a secret, but the fact was that Helga was as resourceful as Gerald could be. Sometimes more so, when people she loved were the subject of her subterfuges.

"Yes, I suppose I did date a man or two. But none of them seemed ready for the commitment at the time. Or I wasn't ready. Once, both. The stars never aligned there for me. Maybe they still will."

"Yeah but how did you know they weren't ready? Or that you weren't for that matter?"

Dr. Bliss smiled at Helga, canting her head slightly to regard her patient with curiosity. "These are rather inexperienced and youthful questions for a patient I usually find to be far more mature and insightful. Are you feeling confused?"

_Dammit,_ Helga thought. _She's reading my moves again._

"Arnold's just got me all mixed up, okay? How did you know you weren't ready for something major and dramatic?" For such a furious, powerful soul, Helga always felt weak and insecure and _childlike_ when it came to love and commitment. She'd spent her whole life in a one sided love, that everything else seemed like a fake she wasn't interested in or a fairy tale she could never have.

"I suppose that experience has taught me that I will be ready when my heart and my brain are aligned. When I can logically agree to what my passions irrationally want, well then I have nothing to lose."

Helga blinked at the explanation. She had never once felt like her heart and brain were aligned. The concept felt utterly _alien _to her. She had no concept of what that would look like. From her vantage point, she would always be forced to pick sides between her heart and her brain, and let one fall to the wayside in total favor of the other.

"Well right now, my heart wants him and my brain says I'm no good for him, so he shouldn't waste his time on me." Helga found it difficult to say out loud. She felt a throb of emotion chunk up in her throat, threatening to bring tears with it.

"I think that is a totally normal insecurity to attach to a boy you think so highly of. We have a hard time seeing our own self worth as it is. It's one of those timeless struggles poets and philosophers have been puzzling over since antiquity. And that just becomes doubly difficult when the heroic ideal of what we aspire to is held up in comparison. I don't think your assessment is accurate, but no amount of logic will convince your _brain _that your _heart_ is in the right."

Helga rolled onto her side, watching Dr. Bliss carefully. She was about to get to the point, the dramatic pivot that Helga would use to navigate these troubled seas, and the storm named Arnold.

"I think you have displayed remarkable maturity and depth to listen to your brain's ideas at the expense of ten years of heart's desire. The restraint is admirable, but ultimately I don't think it's the right move for you right now."

Helga's thick eyebrows arched high. She didn't know what to say. "You're saying...what, that I should...what _are _you saying."

Dr. Bliss adopted the look she wore when she gave Helga an Official Suggestion. These were serious, and Helga had learned to listen to them all or she would inevitably regret it.

"I am saying that after ten years of listening to your brain, it's time to let the heart drive the Helgamobile for a little while. We talked about your letters many times, and you always came to the very mature conclusion that your letters would merely be hurtful and painful to read. I felt that working through those thought processes and emotions was excellent therapy for your self-confidence and self-image issues, and you came out of a very dark place stronger and more psychologically sound than I would have ever expected.

"_However_," she pivoted her tone, gently articulating her point to Helga. Her patient listened with wide eyed intensity, hanging on her every word. "That stage of your psychological development is completed and it has served its purpose. And now Arnold is back. We have a golden opportunity for you to finish putting the last piece of the Helga puzzle in place, but first you have to give in."

"G-give in? What do you mean, doc?"

"You need to surrender your brain to your heart now, and confront Arnold. It's time you told him how you feel."

Helga sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the couch. She stared at her shoes, trembling slightly. Dr. Bliss was almost _never _wrong. If her heart wanted Arnold no matter the cost, but her brain was doubtful and trying to look after his best interests, wouldn't it be _selfish_ to pick her own feelings over his?

"Doc, isn't that a bit _selfish?"_

"You bet." Dr. Bliss responded without hesitation. Helga had no idea how she managed to seem so sure of herself. It must be those decades of experience and training.

Helga chewed her lip just as she chewed the morsel Dr. Bliss had just fed her. She hadn't been selfish about Arnold in _years_. She'd stopped the scheming and the tricks when he left. Of course, she used to get up to _plenty._ She practically lived to harass him, keep him away from other girls, and ruin his day whenever he stopped paying attention to her. It had been fun. It had been how she expressed her love to him, secretly forcing him to be around her and pay attention to her and think about her. She liked when he thought about her. She felt herself smiling involuntarily, and felt very aware of Dr. Bliss's smile aimed right at her.

"Doc, I know you're all Cheshire over there, but you're gonna need to sell me on this one. It feels-"

"Frightening. I know. But I just remember the sad little girl that sat on my couch, her heart broken, speaking to me as if every year she'd lived had been worth three of anyone else's. Giving Arnold up. _Letting him be._ Helga, it was remarkable. I've been working with you for a very long time, and that moment is still one of the most powerful we've ever had. You should be _proud_ of that. But you should also be ready to _undo_ all of it. It's time.

"Arnold is back now, and there's no reason to keep yourself from being Helga with him anymore. He's a grown person, and he's lived his childhood without any disruption from you, just like you wanted. I think it was good for you to give him that, and I think he probably appreciates it more than he even realizes. You've done your good deed; time to cash in on the reward."

Helga wasn't so sure. What would she even _do?_ So far, her plan was to have a big dramatic goodbye with Arnold in a private room somewhere after the equally dramatic show. The party was how she intended to _close_ the door on Arnold, and now her psychologist, maybe the person whose insights she respected and trusted the most in the world, was suggesting that she not only keep the door open, that she _rip_ it off the hinges.

"What if he rejects me?" She couldn't imagine Arnold would accept her. Not after her icy rejection at the coffee shop, and not after ten years of no responses from her.

"Oh, Helga, if you finally pour your heart out to him, and finally use all that creative energy you've been building and building over the years to express to him every feeling you've been wanting to tell him but never could, I couldn't imagine he would be anything but deeply and sincerely touched. We've talked about Arnold for years. Arnold is a major focal point in your life, and while I've always felt that he was good for you, he's also been in your way every step of the way. He's both your beacon and your albatross."

"So, say I agree, and I just decide to spill my guts all over him tomorrow night. What if the literally impossible happens and he reciprocates my feelings but still wants to leave? I couldn't handle that, doc. I can't handle hearing him say that he l-l-loves me again, and then leave." Helga stared at her hands helplessly. That was it. She'd finally said it. Her real fear.

Because Helga remembered with vivid, perfect clarity the moment that Arnold confessed to her. It was the single happiest moment of her life. She'd never forget it, as long as she lived.

She and Arnold were alone, separated from the rest of the group. Arnold had been trying to tell Helga something the whole trip, but Helga had been avoiding him and unusually surly. Truthfully, she was afraid, afraid of what Arnold kept trying to tell her. He'd been acting unusually towards her ever since the TPI thing, and then the whole April Fool's Day thing. Arnold had been paying a lot of attention to her, asking her things, spending time around her when she was used to being the one hanging around.

Finally, he had cornered her. She was tired, and sweaty, and she looked terrible. Helga recalled the thrill in her arm when Arnold had taken her hand when he finally got her alone, and the screaming pounding terror she felt when he drew in close and locked eyes.

"Helga," he had said. She remembered trying to swallow with a dry throat. She smelled his sweat, he was so close. "You've been avoiding me this whole trip now, and I've just been trying to talk to you. I just wanted to thank you," he stepped closer to her.

"Th-thank me? What for, _Football_ Head. And back off, you're getting t-too close to me," her voice had none of the typical venom it usually could muster. She sounded as nervous as she felt.

"I won't back off. I don't think you think I'm too close. In fact, I know you like when I'm close because you told me." Arnold held eye contact, and Helga was pinned in place by his stare. "I didn't forget what you said, and I don't think you said it in the _heat of the moment._ You really _do _love me, don't you?"

Helga remembered the immediate dizziness, then the anger that he cornered her and demanded her feelings from her. Like some sort of _brute._ She shoved herself free of him, pushing Arnold over onto his butt. She towered over him, clenching a fist. "Yeah, what of it? So I love you, you little shrimp. Don't think that lets you _grab_ me and make demands of me, Football Head. In fact, don't go assuming I want you _around_ all the time either. You've been following me around and making a lot of trouble for me since this stupid trip _started._"

Helga recalled with sadness the way he looked up at her. Genuine hurt. Then anger. She sighed while Dr. Bliss watched her think, remembering the lesson she had learned hard that day: little boys are not the best at processing their feelings into constructive forms of expression.

"Fine! You know what Helga, I really thought I could finally get you to open up to me, but even when you admit that you care about me, you literally push me away. I'm sick of it! It's so confusing!" Arnold stood back up, getting right back in her face, but this time with an accusing finger in her chest. "You don't get to string me along and tell me you _love_ me and then act like nothing's _changed_ and push me around. It's selfish. Stop and think about someone else for half a second - think about how it might be hurting my feelings."

"H-Hurting you? _Hurting_ you? Hah! What do you know of pain, Football Head? I've been pining over you, _unrequited _I might add, for seven years! How's that for pain? And just about every time I tried to be _nice_ to you for a change, you get all in my face and act like a total jerk. Like the stupid egg assignment!"

Arnold ignored her accusation and went right to the heart of it. "Who says it's unrequited?"

Helga had frozen in place. She can recall, with absolute precision, the sounds of the jungle then, the constant noise of _life_ everywhere around her, the smell of wet plants and decaying matter and her sweat, the constant dull heat that hovered over everything like a blanket. She remembers the look on Arnold's face, how cute he looked all sweaty with his shirt opened extra buttons. She can remember, without error, how Arnold looked, sounded, and smelled when he said it.

"I love you, Helga. I have for a long time, I just didn't know what it was I felt, or how to say it. You've _always_ been there, if not for me, _with_ me. I don't just like you like you. I love you."

Helga put her face in her hands. The rest of the memory was kissing. She felt herself grow flush at the ghostly sensation of his clumsy lips finding hers, and the frightening passion his ten year old heart could express in a kiss. It had been _intense._ And then, too soon, Gerald found them, and the moment was over.

And not long after all of that, he chose to leave her.

_That_ was what she was afraid of. She was afraid of being given a moment of happiness and then immediately punished for it with another ten years or a lifetime of sorrow. She couldn't handle that happening twice. She wouldn't. Given the choice, she'd rather cut it all off at the pass, and say goodbye. But her doctor recommended that she give it another shot.

"Doc, I trust you." She finally spoke.

"Good. I've worked hard to earn that trust."

"I'm just not convinced you're right here." Helga looked up at Dr. Bliss from her hands. She was really afraid. She hoped her doctor could see it.

"Well the choice is of course yours. I can only offer my professional opinion - and if I am honest, my personal opinion. Relationship advice is usually outside the scope of what a psychologist offers, but you're important to me as a patient and as a friend. I want you to be happy, and I think you have a good shot at it."

Helga took a shuddering breath, rubbing her eyes with her palms once more. Finally, she stood up, her decision made.

"Alright. I'll do it. Arnold has _no idea_ what he's in store for, but, I'll tell him everything. I'll _do_ everything. All of this...this frustration, and anticipation and _want_ is coming out, tomorrow night."

Dr. Bliss smiled and stood with Helga, extending her hand for a professional shake. Helga lunged and hugged her instead, squeezing her favorite doctor with all the affection she could muster.

"Thank you Dr. Bliss. I'll make you proud."

* * *

"As I live and _breathe_ Helga Pataki you look _divine_," Rhonda Wellington Lloyd gasped. In the party's press of people, Helga had not seen that she was headed directly for the precise individual she had no interest in seeing.

"Hello _Rhonda_," she spat, her voice acid and bitter.

"_Love_ the shoes. Tres cute. Love the party, too, what a genius little plan. It's positively _devious._ Don't worry, I remember the words."

Helga scowled at her, deciding to close the distance a little and assert herself. "Good. Don't fuck this up for me, Lloyd, or you'll end up a cautionary tale to frighten little rich girls at bedtime."

"Oh, Helga, you always were a kidder. So tell me true, have you seen him yet? Arnold? Isn't he _divine_? It's like he's stepped out of a classical painting, all bronzed and strong looking. And oh, _that hair._"

Helga was working her way around the crowd, but Rhonda was following her. She and Phoebe had split up to find the purse ten minutes ago, and Helga was headed to the rooms upstairs. She suddenly couldn't shed her parasitic hop-along, despite all the scowls and threats.

"Yeah, I saw him a few days ago. What of it?"

"Don't tell me you didn't try to tap that." Rhonda laughed her wanton laugh, lifting her cocktail glass to her delicately stained red lips which had curved into a wicked little smile. Helga turned to her, squaring off her shoulders. Rhonda should have recognized it as a warning sign.

"Tell me, after the little show and tell are you planning on getting him alone? If I were you, I'd be itching to jump his bones. All that adolescent _longing_ you know? My god, the years surely must have added expo_nentially_ to his passion. Mmh, and _those arms._ Why, I'd like to-" Rhonda was interrupted by Helga's hand snatching her glass from her hands right as it was poised at her pursed lips. Rhonda watched in horror when Helga belted the glass back, shooting the entire contents in a single gulp. She hurled the glass to the side, smashing it uselessly against a wall, and locked a savage look with Rhonda's very surprised one.

"Look here, _princess_, what happens between me and Arnold after the show is going to be _fucking legendary._ You'll be hearing about it in sorrowful news reports for years. There's gonna be a fucking candle light vigil in memory of the _tragic loss of life_ in the collateral damage. I'm sure your tiny, limited imagination has all kinds of boring fantasies of six minutes of missionary queued up for you to titter over your bubblegum vodka cocktails-that tasted like fucking garbage by the way-but just recognize that before you stands _a nightmare_ wreathed in _sex and gunsmoke._ You just play your part, look pretty, and keep your fucking mouth as shut as you're genetically capable of."

Rhonda's mouth hung agape, raw shock painted over every millimeter of her face. Helga snorted triumphantly, stalking up the stairs freshly clear of the annoying satellite intent on intruding into her evening. Somehow, she felt remarkably like her old self, half-cocked and ready to tumble, but grounded to a sweet and tender foundation of affection for someone greater than herself.

"God_damn_ I feel _great_! It's like the cork on my personality has been mysteriously popped off by some unknowable cosmic force. It's like Helga Pataki can _breathe_ again, I can extend my arms and walk with confidence! Criminy, I'm even threatening Rhonda again-OUTTA the way, you slack-jawed mouth breather-" Helga savagely shoved someone out of her way, nearly sending them toppling down the stairs. "Shit, a girl can't even walk around anymore without having to assert her personal space. You people need to be aware," she snarled to the crowd around her, "Helga G. Pataki is coming through. Dawdle at your fucking peril, _lumps._ I got a purse to find, a show to kill, and a boy's heart to claim."

Helga smiled at herself with satisfaction when the crowd parted for her. She marched into the first bedroom in her path, barrelling through the door.

Two people, mostly exposed skin, leapt up from the bed in the room in surprise. Helga growled and rolled her eyes. "Oh brother, _seriously?_ The party's barely even started and you're _already_ taking clothes off? Show some restraint, for Pete's sake. Now hurry up and get out. Get the fuck out!"

The couple, grabbing for their clothes while Helga lectured them, threw on what clothes they could and ducked out of the room in embarrassment. Helga rolled her eyes skyward when she heard the libidinous jeering from the crowd outside immediately upon their exit.

"Jesus Christ, it's like the whole house is hopped up on human growth hormone. Bunch of wild dogs, all of them eager for the pathetic, pawing ministrations of one another in some desperate attempt to know the tender, sincere affections of another. How little they know. How they disgust me. How trite and trivial they all seem, laid to measure against the giant of my love. Ah, Arnold! How I anticipate your surprise. How exciting it will be, my love, to see your features when the truest expression of my tender affections is finally unveiled before you! How little you know of the juggernaut within me, laid low by years of restraint as chivalrous and heroic as any Red Crosse Knight. Ah, Arnold, my Isolde, let me be your Tristram and embrace you in love's most purest expression! Ah, Arnold, sweetest desire, most painful of needs, how the minutes seem to-" a savage buzzing somewhere in the room interrupted her sudden onset monologue. Helga scowled, picking up where she left of. "How the minutes seem to-" _Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz. _"Oh for fuck's sake!" She snarled, stalking off to the corner where the insidious note repeatedly harshed her mellow.

Helga snickered to herself victoriously, stepping into the corner to see Phoebe's purse.

"Well all right. Not bad, Pataki. Now we can finally end this stupid goose chase."

The buzzing in the purse ceased. Helga snorted at the minor victory-she counted the annoyance ending as a victory somehow-and started to leave the room.

_Bzzzzzz. Bzzzzzz._

The buzzing returned. Phoebe's phone was being dialed off the hook. Helga's left eyebrow twitched, and she opened the purse impatiently, snatching the phone free.

Her eyes gawked at the caller ID.

"_Lila Sawyer?_ What the fuck is _miss perfect_ doing calling Phoebe?" Helga didn't even hesitate. She swiped the screen, accepting the call and bringing it to her ear.

Lila started talking immediately, hearing the line pick up on her end.

"Phoebe! Phoebe, I'm ever so glad I finally was able to catch you. I hope it's not too late, oh, I'm ever so hopeful it's not too late! I want you to call it off. I was wrong, I was _ever so_ wrong. I can't bear it, I can't bear to imagine my Arnold being _tricked_ all for my silly insecurities-and I'm terrified you'll be successful. I can't lose him, I'm ever so scared that he'll change his mind after all! You have to call it off, please, I'm begging you! Don't let Helga play for him tonight!"

Helga's mind was a maelstrom, a swirling collection of confused eddies of thought, coalescing around a central point. Phoebe had been talking to Lila for some reason, about Arnold, and about the party, and about _her._ Something was going on between Lila and Arnold - the fact that Lila called him "_my Arnold_" wasn't lost on her in the slightest - and even more so, Phoebe knew what it was and intentionally hid it from her. She felt mad. She felt scared. She felt sickeningly betrayed. But, more than anything, she felt _powerful_.

Because _she_ had picked up the phone. Not Phoebe.

"I'm real sorry to tell ya, toots," Helga began, and she heard Lila squeak in surprise to hear her voice. "But Phoebe's not here. It's just old Helga. So tell me, _Lila_, what's the story here?"

"H-H_-Helga?_ Wh-what are you-" Lila stammered, clearly taken by surprise.

"Never you mind, Sawyer. Doesn't matter how I got the call. Just matters that I did. So why don't you do me the honor of filling me in, for old time's sake." Helga's voice carried a dangerous note, a promise of something terrible to come.

"N-no, Helga, you don't understand. There's circumstances - I can explain, but you need to listen to me."

"Listen to you? Hon, you're all mixed up. I don't gotta listen to you, not unless you've got something _worthwhile_ to say. Why don't you start with Arnold. Fill me in on what this "my Arnold" business is all about. What, you got the hots for Football Head now?"

"I'm, well, yes, I'm in love with him, and-"

"Ohohoho, of course you are. Why wouldn't you be? Well that's just peachy. Everybody loves Arnold! Everybody can be in love with Arnold now. It'll be one big huge clusterfuck. I'll love Arnold, you'll love Arnold, we'll _all_ just be in love with Arnold!"

Lila started to say something, but Helga cut her off sharply. "Except that's not even close to how this is gonna go, Sawyer. I don't know _what_ the fuck is going on between you and Phoebe. I'll find out, mind you, but it's fucking moot at this exact juncture. 'Cause guess what? The show's on, sister. That's right, the show is _on._ Twelve songs, one big fucking glorious finish, and then _ten sweet minutes_ alone with our sweet, innocent little Football Head. He won't be too innocent for much longer, _Lila._ So say your goodbyes to whatever virtue you thought he had - Arnold's mine. And I'm going to take him from you. I'll take him from _anyone_ that gets in my way. I don't care how many bodies I have to step over, I don't care _who_ I have to betray, what oaths I must break, or what friendships I must forsake. Arnold belongs to _Helga Geraldine Pataki _as of tonight. You'd do well to settle that out with whatever gods you believe in, 'cause it's a _fucking fact._"

Helga turned the phone off to the sound of Lila's shocked, devastated pleading. She felt numb to her rival's pain, and felt triumphantly powerful. She felt invincible, like she had discovered the enemy's secret weakness and exploited it flawlessly.

Calmly, she hummed one of her songs to herself as she deleted all of Lila's texts and incoming calls, and blocked her number on Phoebe's phone. Smiling diabolically to herself, she dropped the phone in Phoebe's purse, and sweetly called out.

"Oh Phoebe! I found your purse~!"

Grimly imagining the ways in which she might extract the truthful details of Phoebe's betrayal, Helga stepped out into the party, more than prepared for the night before her, armed to the teeth with weapons of femininity and guile.

_Oh yes, Arnold __will__ be mine, or I'm not Helga Geraldine motherfucking Pataki._ She smiled to herself. Time for the show to begin.


	6. Chapter 6 - Young and Happy!

A/N: Here it is, the party! Sorry it's taken this long to get an update up. Fighting off a cold and it took me away from my obsession. Anyway, here's finally an Arnold POV. He's got a lot to say and show, and the Party promises to deliver the most interesting events yet. So strap in, this will be the longest chapter so far by a country mile. This is by NO means the end, but perhaps the first climax of many to come. Once again, the songs are not mine, merely chosen for their relevance and inspirational qualities to the story. Songs: "I Get Nervous" by Lower Dens, "Tibetan Pop Stars" by Hop Along, and "Young and Happy!" by Hop Along. I highly recommend you check these artists out! Hop Along is basically my inspiration for this entire story. I will remove all song lyrics at the original artist's request - but I doubt they'd mind. Enjoy the show.

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 6, Young and Happy!

"Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?" - Leo Tolstoy

* * *

Arnold Shortman stared at the long tunnel extending from the passenger jet he just spent ten hours nervously anticipating this very moment on. At the other end of the tunnel was Hillwood, or at least the short taxi ride from the international airport to that smaller satellite city he once called home. There was Helga. There was his past.

A bump on his back triggered his momentary return to the present, and the press of impatient passengers with their own lives to return to ushered the ever considerate Arnold to cross the threshold. He shouldered the even weight of his military-grade duffle bag, all fifty pounds of his belongings carefully packed, rolled, and stowed away within. His mother and father had outfit him with the rugged pack as a gift when he was much younger, explaining to him that it was designed so that the average weight of whatever he put inside would come out to around fifty pounds, total. It made trekking through the jungle much easier, and travel a trivial burden. It was one of the many practical, pragmatic things his parents had taught him in ten years of humanitarian work, private tutoring, and globe-trotting adventure.

He watched the dusty boots on his feet pull him forward through the lonely, air-jet cooled boarding tunnel. The white dust on his boots was clay from a rock salt quarry in Brazil; Stella and Miles had said their goodbyes to him there just two days before, working on negotiating the miner's rights with the American-owned minerals conglomerate. That's where they'd been for the last six months, and where they'd likely be until filial duties to their son obliged them return to the country they found themselves constantly working against.

Arnold had been shocked, he recalled, when he learned that his mother and father were basically comunistas that had changed their mission to education and protection of the indigenous tribes like the Green Eyes through organizing their elders against the encroaching powers of the capitalist first world. He had ideas about their proclivities from the journal, but, the truth of their ordeals had been quite the eye-opener.

Arnold stood outside the tunnel, surrounded by the press of people eager to get to their next gate. Air travel had simply changed so much since he was a kid; he recalled the first time he was at an airport, and being allowed all the way up to the terminal gate. He recalled seeing families expectant and joyous to see the arrival of their loved ones. He was always touched, but slightly saddened by the particular ritual of an airport reunion. He often fantasized about Helga meeting him at some airport gate, almost bouncing with excitement to see him.

The reality of the world, he had learned, was that things progressed towards pushing people apart. Gone were the crowds of lovers and loved ones to greet the weary travelers. There was just the next gate now, the next destination, the reclamation of protected and checked belongings.

_Everyone is so alone_. Arnold progressed through the airport towards security checkout and customs, reciting the exact words he would repeat to the border agents. _I hold dual citizenry in San Lorenzo and America. I am returning home from educational travel. I have nothing to declare._ It was mostly true. Technically, nothing he had in his pack was illegal. Just frowned upon.

His mind kept drifting to the immediate future while he waited in line at customs. What does Helga look like? Is she still mean and sour? Did she get tall? Does she still have one eyebrow? He felt the kernel of guilt within him twinge when he noticed he was only thinking of her. It was an ugly thing, something he had to swallow now. He would feel guilty when he thought about Helga, probably forever. It was a consequence of chasing his future, and of making Lila happy in the best way he could._ I'm doing the right thing_, he thought to himself, stepping up to the customs agent.

"Name, country of origin, and do you have anything to declare?" She seemed bored. She asked this question thousands of times a day. She probably barely flinched when they arrested someone, Arnold thought.

"Arnold Shortman. I hold dual citizenry in San Lorenzo and America. I am returning home from educational travel. I have nothing to declare." His voice was easy, calm. He held eye contact, and didn't shift his weight around a lot. He had reason to be nervous.

The customs agent eyed his dusty boots and jeans, looking him up and down, before deciding something inwardly, and stamping his passport.

"Welcome home, Mr. Shortman. Baggage claim is to the left."

He took his passport, offering her a "Thanks, have a nice day," and mostly meaning it. Inwardly, he was relieved. He'd made it through with the plant. I'm not doing anything illegal, this genus of plant is native to Canada. Non-native and invasive species laws are specific enough. A different species of a native genus is allowed under the right circumstances. The plant. It was probably Lila's best hope at nerve therapy, if they got the right people to look at it. Stella had spent the better part of the last few months looking for it in Brazil, one of the other reasons they made the trip South. The whole Shortman family felt terrible about what had happened, and all three had agreed, without much discussion, to do everything in their power to help her.

Arnold stood outside the airport, smelling the sulphurous, stale, sour stink of the late-summer roads. America just had a different smell to him now. Or maybe it was the smell it had all along, and he had never noticed it._ It's weird to be back,_ he recognized. _The air is so dry._

A taxicab, the bright yellow of Helga's hair, pulled into the long circular drive at the loading bay area of the airport terminals, slowing to stop in front of Arnold when he held out his hand. Arnold swung his heavy, drab pack into the trunk, slamming it shut, and climbed into the backseat.

"Llévame a Hillwood, por favor," he automatically rattled off. The cabby turned bodily in his front seat, eyeing Arnold. He was tan, but had that bright, sun-drenched blonde hair of a lifetime spent outside. He carried the dirt of a Brazilian rock salt quarry, and hadn't shaved in a few weeks. The cab driver pulled an eyebrow high, not saying anything.

"Ah, sorry. Uh, Hillwood. Please." Arnold felt embarrassed. Spanish was one of those languages almost everybody spoke in the Americas. He was unused to the stares he was getting now that he was coming home. The cab driver wordlessly turned back around, pulling into traffic to start the drive.

Arnold breathed a sigh of relief. He was back. He wasn't home, but he was back. It felt nostalgic, more powerfully than any of the pictures he'd obsessively kept in pristine condition of his childhood friends. That folio was carefully wrapped in bubble-wrap packaging plastic, at the bottom of his pack, where it was safest. He had looked at every picture of his younger self with his old friends as he packed it, spending an hour slowly turning over the pages of the binder by the light of his cellphone. So many memories. An electric anticipation surged through him. He wanted to see them all.

Most of all, he wanted to see Helga.

The plan was to head to the boarding house and see his grandparents first. Phil took his calls every week, always managing to complain when Arnold called collect. Gertie sometimes answered the phone, all excited, calling him "Robinson Crusoe" and asking him how the bushmen were treating him. He smiled fondly, thinking of them, his spirit always gallened that somehow, time hadn't really touched either of them. Phil walked with a cane now, but was still just as salty, unscrupulous, and scheming as always. Gertie was in remarkable shape, probably owing to all the karate she practiced, and was still hopping around the boarding house by all accounts. Even if his entire world had shifted dramatically when he decided to stay with his parents, the anchor of his world, his loving grandparents, had remained the lighthouse he could point his soul at for purchase. Phil was always there with half-cocked advice, and Gertie was always there with outrageous wisdom that she cloaked and obfuscated with what seemed like nonsense and rambling.

He hoped seeing them again brought him a bit of stability, something resembling a recognizable foundation that would make this return trip less terrifying.

A light late summer rain draped over the windows of the taxi, slipping him into a veil of grey mist as he was brought back home. The black interior of the cab was almost womb like, stifling hot, and smelling like bodies. Within the well-traveled memories of his past, nothing had ever felt so alien and isolating as the lonely ride back to Hillwood.

* * *

"Hey, is that Arnold?" a person that reminded Arnold remarkably of Sid shouted out. He was sitting on the stoop of the red brick frat house, rolling something to smoke and surrounded by a group of people Arnold didn't recognize. Arnold didn't reply at first, walking slowly to the party to keep his nerves in check. Closer, he saw that it was indeed his old friend Sid; black hair slicked back, wearing a black western pearl snap shirt tucked into skinny black jeans, which had their cuffs rolled up to expose recently polished and shined black ostrich skin leather boots. Arnold could hardly believe the well-dressed figure was Sid even with that familiar bold and prominent nasal profile, but when he stood up eagerly to throw a big hug around Arnold, a wave of familiarity and excitement crashed into him.

"Sid!" Arnold could hardly articulate the surprise he felt. Sid tucked the hand-rolled cigarette behind his ear, shaking Arnold's hand firmly.

"Hot damn, Arnold, it's way cool to see you. I figured you'd be shorter; I owe Stinky fifty bucks." Arnold saw tattoos on Sid's forearms, dark shapes and figures he couldn't make out but that reminded him strongly of the kinds of things he saw on cartel enforcers. It unnerved him, but he pushed it out of his mind, focusing on the brief reunion.

"Yeah, it's good to be back. I'm super glad to see you too, Sid. Where is Stinky?"

"The slammer." Sid grinned.

"Wh-what? What happened?" Arnold couldn't hide his shock.

"Ah, I'm just fucking with ya. But you sure bought it easy enough! Show's what you think of us after all these years huh?" Sid's grin was wide. Arnold always appreciated his friend's unique sense of style and jocularity. Sid was a kidder, and it gladdened Arnold to see that hadn't faded. "He's inside, trying to get into some twiggy girl's skirt." Sid brought the hand-rolled cigarette to his mouth, lighting it casually. "Say, you need to party? Everything I got's on the house for my man The Returner tonight. Sid's special stocks are wide open for Arnold Shortman, the Man of the Hour."

Arnold felt uncomfortable. It wasn't that he was against people using recreational drugs of their own free will; he had just spent a long time seeing the harmful effects of the trafficking of said substances. You looked at a joint differently when you had seen first hand a little girl harvesting the plant used to roll it at gunpoint.

"Nah, thanks though. I pregamed," Arnold lied. That was another thing he'd picked up in his ten year absence; a sense of subtlety and the tools to put it to use.

"You just find me outside if you change your mind," Sid grinned, shaking Arnold's hand again. "You better get inside though, it'd be way uncool of you to keep her waiting."

"Her? Who do you mean?" Arnold had a feeling whom Sid had meant, but played the fool for her benefit. He still didn't know how people regarded her about this topic; Helga never told him anything.

"C'mon man," Sid tilted his head knowingly. "Just get inside."

Arnold nodded, smiling and offering awkward pleasantries to the circle of people around Sid that had watched their reunion with silence. He had no idea who any of them were, but it was obvious to him that every single one of them knew of him.

Squeezing past two girls holding hands in the doorway, Arnold stepped into the stale warmth and smoky haze of the party, the smell of beer and marijuana immediately clinging to his senses like an August heat wave. He'd never been inside a party of this size before, having mostly been to tribal celebrations and a few quinceaneras with far fewer people crowding the spaces within. He spotted the beer line, a big guy in a letter jacket pumping the keg and pouring drinks into red plastic Solo cups, which were snatched up as soon as he could get them out on the table. Another line snaked and roped through the house, leading to what he saw was the downstairs bathrooms under the stairs leading to the second floor. A third line wove up the stairs, leading beyond where he could see, but he imagined it was to the private rooms where people could sequester themselves.

In the far corner of the living room, he spotted Brainy behind the unearthly blue glow of a MacBook and a wide spread of DJ turntables and sound mixers, large sound-canceling headphones pressed to one ear, his head bobbing to the complex beat he was mixing and that thrummed in the air around Arnold like a heartbeat.

Brainy glanced up from his music, making eye contact with Arnold for half a beat. The look was brief, but it was enough to tell Arnold everything he needed to know about Brainy and Helga. Jealousy has a lot of ways it manifests, and the lemon look Brainy painted on his face said in one instant that Arnold was not welcome in Brian's world. Arnold couldn't blame him.

Arnold moved towards the stage where Brainy was suddenly mixing in "_Hit the Road Jack_" by Ray Charles into the pounding house rhythm. The message wasn't lost on him, but Arnold wanted to get a better look and to size up his rival - if he is a rival, Arnold wondered - and say hello. Even Brainy deserved a greeting after so many years, though it promised to be awkward with the music so clearly expressing how the tall, wraithlike boy felt about the possible reunion.

"Just a minute, Shortman," a soft, feminine voice purred in his ear up close, a slender hand slinking around his arm. "Don't you _dare_ slip by without saying hello to Rhonda Wellington Lloyd."

Arnold turned to see Rhonda, her tall and slender form pressed up tight against his shoulders. She held his arm with two thin hands, the nails painted black and tipped in red, a silvery bangle hanging loose and large from a small wrist. She was wearing a dusky red dress, just as Arnold always pictured her, but poured into it with a taught and slinky body Arnold hadn't ever imagined. Her sharp, nearly flawless bob curled up and in under her chin, framing her heart shaped face and drawing attention to the thin red line of a feline smile on her strikingly pretty features. Arnold had to force himself to take a breath; she was stunningly beautiful, and immaculately styled and groomed to match.

"Give us a kiss for old time's sake?" She purred, leaning up to whisper the request into his ear. His face felt hot, and he turned his face to oblige, offering a quick friendly peck on the cheek.

"Rhonda, you look amazing." He sincerely meant it. Arnold had always liked Rhonda, even if she was shallow and stuck up, because he'd always seen the side of her that needed validation and attention just as much as Helga did. Rhonda's difference was in that she gathered friends up around her like weapons against loneliness, and ruled over them with her good looks and wealth, charming them with wit and cowing them with the fear of her harpy tongue. Even still, he had always seen a nice girl under all of that glitz and glamour.

The creature poured against him, touching his chest and smiling, was someone quite familiar and yet altogether strange.

"Thanks, darling, but I'm sure I'm a total _fright_ in this _dreadful_ heat. But look at you, you're all grown up." She squeezed a hard bicep for emphasis. "_Very_ nice, I approve as a naturally born gifted connoisseur on everything male. Have you been here long?" She started to lead him through the party towards the back of the house. Away from Brainy, who he cast one last look at.

Brainy had watched the whole interaction, and just watched Arnold go.

"I just got here. I saw Sid outside-" Arnold began.

"Ugh, Sid, that little _cretin_." Rhonda scowled. "He's shaking down everyone that comes in for party favors, and making a small fortune I'd wager. No respect for decorum at _all_, that _wretch_. I'll have to remember that the next time he booty calls me."

"Sid booty calls you?" Arnold couldn't hide the surprise in his voice.

"He _tries_ to, the vicious little_ troglodyte_." Rhonda smiled sweetly up at him, pulling him through a doorway past a couple grinding in front of the amps, and into the kitchen. About a dozen people mingled in the large room, some pooled around a game of beer pong around the kitchen island, a few others raiding the open fridge for anything of interest. Rhonda pushed Arnold back against one of the walls, letting her hand trail on his torso. "You just sit tight right here. I'll fetch Gerald straight away. No use having you blunder about like a lost little orphan all night-oops, my sincerest apologies, Arnold, forgive the clumsy choice of words." She smiled playfully, tapping her head with a small fist as if she'd forgotten that up until they were ten, he had been an orphan.

_Has she always been this calculated?_ Arnold just stood where she planted him, embarrassed, her lingering eye contact making him self-conscious. Her almond shaped mahogany brown eyes seemed to be looking for something in his gaze.

"Have you seen her yet, Arnold?" Her voice had changed tone. It sounded almost sad.

"We ran into each other earlier this week, my first day back." Arnold didn't even try to feign ignorance now. He knew Rhonda well enough to know she was just well connected as Gerald, if not more. He knew she meant Helga.

"Not yet tonight, though? Be alert, Arnold," she started cautiously. "Something's woke our dear Helga up. Or I should say _someone_. The lioness has teeth again. I just had a _delightful tete-a-tete_ with her and I could swear I was seeing a ghost."

Arnold felt the confusion twisting on his face. He couldn't imagine a Helga without the vicious teeth of her youth. Even if she had been subdued and deflated when they last met, he had thought he could see that fire inside her still lit and tended. "What does that mean?"

"Up until about two hours ago, Helga Pataki was a big dog with a big bark and no bite since practically forever and a day. Since the day you left, _actually_. Outside of a few noteworthy feminist outbursts-I believe she knocked someone poor grabby-handed mandchild's teeth out last fall?-our little Helga G. Pataki has practically been a _pussycat_. I've felt so bad for her that I even rigged prom so she'd win Queen. It's been so privately _sad_. Nobody likes knowing the tiger at the zoo is declawed; it spoils the adventure."

Arnold stared to the side, his eyes falling on the middle distance while he considered this unwelcome, unpleasant news. He didn't like to imagine Helga as anything less than what he remembered her. It not only spoiled the adventure, it frightened him. What else died down in her passionate heart, if her fury had been thus dimmed?

Because like Helga, Arnold had changed. Through a decade of constant struggle against the worst in people, the brilliant beacon of goodness within Arnold that guided him and shined on the best in people and reflected their best potential back to them and brought them the gift of self reflection and kindness had dimmed and cooled to small and carefully tended embers of hope. Arnold had the unfortunate privilege of a prematurely adult perspective from a young age once he reunited with his parents. Exposure to the grandiose, nearly operatic efforts people of enormous privilege and wealth went to utterly annihilate those unfortunate souls that were the least of all humanity soured the brilliant hope within him. Arnold still wished for the best in people, and he worked tirelessly to help them realize this potential as part of his life's ambition; but reality had checked the rampant and unwieldy naivete of his youth, sculpting it into a pragmatic, cautious optimism.

If so much had changed within his heart, Arnold feared, who's to say that everything he loved about Helga wasn't lost as well? Who's to say that her words at the cafe weren't utterly truthful? Stupid, blind hope and a stubborn belief in magic and fairy tales buoyed his affections despite that fatefully chilly meeting; tonight, he aimed to conclusively and utterly squeeze the conclusion to a potentially misspent youth and settle the matter of his heart once and for all. He owed it to Lila. He owed it to Helga. He owed it to himself.

"Rhonda, I'm still in love with-" Arnold began. He had to tell her, he had to tell someone.

"Ah! Ah, no no! No, shush. Shush, _shhhhh_." Rhonda put her fingers on his mouth, shutting him up. "I don't want to hear you say whatever it is you were foolishly and prematurely thinking about saying. I've always thought that you were a great man, and they are few and far between. Don't spoil my night by shattering that heroic image by attempting some clumsy _confession_ of your truest undying love for_ me_."

Rhonda smiled kindly at him, releasing his mouth from her touch. Arnold felt embarrassed, recognizing that Rhonda had just saved him from telling the most nosey and most powerful gossip in Hillwood who of the two girls in his life he intended to choose. There was that kindness in her, shielding Arnold from her even as she accepted the truth of her own character.

"Just keep in mind," she continued, "you're going to see an experience a panoply of remarkable circumstances tonight. This is just the beginning. Everybody here is glad you're back, and everything has been done for you."

Arnold blinked, unsure what to make of that awkward admission.

Rhonda had the unlikely beneficence in her to tell him precisely what to make of it. "So just keep in mind, we all love you _very_ much, Arnold Shortman. Some of us more than _others_." With that, she leaned up on the toes of her black flats to press a lingering, tender kiss to his mouth, smiling against his confused and automatically pursed lips. She dropped from her tiptoes shyly, and flashed him one of her more cunning and defiant grins.

"I always wanted to try that," she laughed with a conqueror's joy, and swayed out of the kitchen with lingering eye contact until she was out of view. Arnold was left wondering what other surprises were in store for him, his lips tingling with the sticky taste of cinnamon lip gloss.

* * *

Arnold stepped out into the lightly misting rain, the coffee shop door closing behind him with the tiny jingle of the bell hung above the doorway. Engrossing anger overwhelmed him, frustration and confusion hoarding the lion's share of his emotive balance, squashing the calm he was desperately attempting to gather in the relatively fresher air.

_What the fuck is going on_, he struggled inwardly. Helga was stonewalling him. She wasn't just acting put out to be seeing him, she was doing the best she could, by his estimation, to be outright hurtful. _What in the hell happened to her in ten years?_

Seeing her had been a shock. It didn't help that she had literally barrelled into him, the surprising strength and weight of her momentum knocking him right off his feet. The Amazon River had less luck toppling him in the past. But the physical sight of her, an adult beyond the scope of his imagination to anticipate, had sent him into an unexpected shock. Luckily for Arnold, the place his mind went when he couldn't think was friendliness and kindness; to Helga, he had hoped, he just seemed excited rather than dead nervous.

She was _beautiful_. Not in the way you'd see in glossy magazines or movie screens, Arnold thought, but in a vivid way, an expressive way, like the brush strokes of Van Gogh, making bold, powerful shapes of color to fleetingly express the weight of beauty in a single moment. Arnold was captivated by her, not because she didn't match up to his imagination, but precisely because she exceeded it in every capacity.

Her eyebrows-plural, now, he noticed-were still large, bold, and nearly pitch black in stark contrast to her early morning sunlight hued hair. He marveled at the expressive quality her powerful eyebrows possessed, quivering and curling like emphatic punctuation around the story of her eyes. Her eyes, he noticed, were still large and round and emotive, crystal blue and now lined with the oddly mature colors of adult makeup. Her long hair, really long compared to his memories, fell around her shoulders and down to her hips unencumbered by the bow he couldn't fathom seeing her without. Her lips, which had always seemed slightly large on her young face and had given her a pouting expression and a slight frown when they were kids, now seemed plush. Plump. Kissable.

He had _stared_. Easily more than he had gawked at Lila when she came to visit. The physical transformation in Helga was remarkable, because even though she had grown into her features, her round nose and her slightly too-large ears no longer as awkward on a pre-teen face, she was still Helga.

And now she was alone in the coffee shop, hopefully chewing on his suggestion. Hopefully finding the truth inside herself that she needed to say. Hopefully, Arnold wished, about to end this nightmare.

He needed to talk to someone. _Gerald just got off the phone with me a half hour ago, he's no good._ Arnold pulled his phone from his pocket, dialing one of the only people that knew the whole story, and who had remained stubbornly unbiased through the whole affair.

"Bueno?" Stella picked up the line, automatically answering her son in Spanish. When he started living with them, traveling between indigenous territories in South and Central America, Arnold had learned that his mother was a brilliant teacher, but a strict instructor. She spoke only Spanish to him for a full year before he became fluent, finally easing off and having English conversations with him on special days. It had frustrated him terribly at first, the young boy merely wishing to talk to his mother in a language that he understood, merely wishing he could tell her everything he had always wanted to say but couldn't; it wasn't until he was seamlessly switching between the two languages with her, effortlessly communicating ideas and concepts with a creative flair he'd never had before that he understood the reason she had so rigidly pushed him. Arnold was close enough to his mother that no secret was sacred between them; no topics were taboo. She had given him his first beer on his 18th birthday, and given him advice when his first girlfriend in Bolivia had told him he wasn't very good at kissing. Arnold trusted his mother with everything, precisely because he could communicate with her in any medium that was necessary.

He very badly needed that connection now, when Helga had ripped the foundation of his fantasies out from under him.

"Mom, it's not going well," He began in Spanish. He would speak in that passionate language for this, needing the specific cultural concepts it could express. "Helga is the bull at the gate."

"Oh Arnold. You knew that the dreams of your past would be difficult to find in your present." Stella sighed for her son, the affectionate and disappointed sound making her seem so close to Arnold.

"I want to see the fire in her heart. But Helga is an icy wall; I will never get the truth of her feelings when she holds herself in locks and chains." Arnold found the poetic expression he fell to with his mother in this conversation to be oddly apt. Helga's poetry sprang to mind, and it filled him with painful nostalgia. "If there's no open door for me here, I have to close it for Lila."

"Lila knows you are in HIllwood, and the smart girl knows why. Don't lie to yourself for Lila when Lila has only shown you truth." Stella cut to the heart of it, always a blunt and candid presence in Arnold's life.

"If I can't get through to Helga, the only choice is to return home. To San Lorenzo." Bitter frustration welled in his voice. This wasn't how he wanted it to be when he had finally come back. Nothing was like he imagined.

"My _beautiful_ son, so bright like the sun and yet so dim. Don't let the memory of your past spoil the adventure of returning home to Hillwood. Phil and Gertie are there, and they've missed you very much. Your true friend Gerald has written you faithfully for many years. There's so much for you there. Not just Helga. Helga is difficult. She never wrote you a letter, not really, and I think I know why, but she has to express it for herself. The trouble with Helga is that she can express herself so beautifully to everyone but the one she loves. Maybe she still loves you. Maybe you still love her. Maybe you love Lila. The gift you have is that in your present, there is only_ possibility_. Open your gift when it's ready. Don't be scared of what is inside before you've opened the box."

Arnold listened to his mother pour out all the words he had needed, her beautiful Spanish curling around the poetry of her expert advice. He knew she was right; he was pushing things too fast. Helga took seven years to tell him how she felt the first time; if she still felt something-and he very much needed to know if she did-it wouldn't come spilling out of her beautifully the instant she saw him.

"You're right. I'll give her time. I can be her friend for now, or forever if she wishes it. I've waited so long for the truth, a little longer is nothing to me."

"You're such a good man, Arnold. Helga and Lila are lucky you have enough love to shine for them both. Just don't keep either of them waiting for long." Stella still didn't know about the engagement, he was fairly certain. Stella wouldn't be giving him advice as if there was still a choice to be made if she did know. Stella was one for keeping your promises.

"Thanks mom. I better get back to Helga. She's expecting me to come back in, and I'll hear her confession or else reassure her with patience."

"Good boy. Tell me how it goes later. Your father says hello."

"Love you mom," Arnold said, closing the conversation in English. Putting the phone in his pocket, he pulled out a scrap of paper, the receipt from his taxi. Just in case she tries to close this chapter up prematurely, he thought, jotting down the date he and Lila had decided that they would be married, barring any changes in Hillwood.

"_Christmas Day, we say goodbye_." He stared at the note, feeling awkwardly melodramatic when he read it back to himself. But, if she closed herself off fully, really giving him the firm "no" he was afraid of, he'd have to say goodbye for himself and for Lila.

He swallowed the gnawing, nagging guilt that always boiled within his guts when he considered for too long that he was playing with Lila's feelings, an ugly truth that he struggled with every step forward he took in Hillwood. She deserves better, he thought, even as he followed it up with, I deserve to know the truth.

One way or the other, he would have his answer, stepping back into the coffee shop after gathering his courage and locking eyes with a very sad looking, very frightened blonde girl from his memory that struggled and refused the meaning of his return.

* * *

"HEY, AW~NOLD" A deep, raspy voice nasally shocked Arnold from the nervous, anticipatory haze his mind had settled into in the kitchen. He glanced around, looking for a familiar face from the voice he could almost recognize.

His gaze settled on Harold, although he almost hadn't recognized him at first.

A dirty-looking, metal-studded street kid dressed in torn, patched, and filth-crusted denim sneered back at him, looking like he was squeezed into his clothes like cheap sausage and smelling like he'd spent the night under a car. His short denim cap, rimmed with rusting-out metal studs and festooned with badges and patches of symbols Arnold couldn't possibly recognize, sat right where the Jewish boy's blue baseball cap had always been, bill turned up to expose a massive unkempt unibrow pierced in six places. A scruffy, salt-and-pepper beard blossomed from the tanned and grinning face, emerging from a thick neck with every available inch of surface area blackened with bold tattoos. A denim vest, squeezing his arms and chest into pronounced shape, boldly displayed Satanic and Anarchist imagery, painted and sewn and stitched on, flying the colors of a Punk for all to see.

"What's UP Shortman, you skinny piece of shit!" Harold pounced, tackling Arnold into the wall with a powerful bear hug. The sour, earthy smell of him poured into Arnold's nose, almost watering his eyes. Arnold struggled to get an arm free, unsure if he was surprised, disgusted, or laughing. He heard himself laughing.

"HAROLD oh my god let go-Harold, _dammit_! Harold you smell like a chain smoking horse butthole!" Arnold got out between breaths, his finally freed arm pounding on the muscular boy's back.

Harold released him with a yellow grin, punching Arnold straight on the arm with a painful thud.

"Aw, I'm sorry Arnold. Too much of a pussy to get _hugged_? What, does your mommy wave her arms at you when she tucks you in for beddie-bye, afraid she might _bruuuuise_ you?" Harold sarcastically blinked his eyes at Arnold. He couldn't believe how little Harold had changed, outside of being a physical ordeal to experience.

"What happened to you, uh, I mean, you look so _different_." Arnold tried to hold back the distaste he had for the change in the boy. He wasn't sure that Harold missed it.

"Aw me and Patty just said the big 'Fuck You!' to our parents, been livin' free together finally after all these years."

"Wow. Patty too?"

"Yeah! It's great, she's great. Baddest bitch in Hillwood, she's messed me up so many times, oh man, she's so strong and so ruthless and so punk. She's the most punk bitch in Hillwood, Arnold, it's great! Oh man, she's so great."

_This guy's still an idiot_, Arnold realized. _But his heart's still in the right place_. Even if Harold was arguably worse to be around, and throwing around gendered slurs about his apparent girlfriend, Arnold still felt the obvious love and affection and warmth radiating from Harold. Maybe he had changed.

"ANYway, me and Patty are gonna blow this lame party soon, after the big show I mean. Helga's shitty band will probably fuck everything up, oh man, it's going to be hilarious! Ahahahaha!" Harold's cackle grated on Arnold. _Helga's band?_ Arnold didn't know about that.

"What do you mean, Helga's band? Is Helga in a band? Are they playing tonight?"

"Oops! Sorry, Arnold, I spoiled the surprise! Oh well, it was a dumb surprise anyway, like anyone'd be impressed with dumb Helga's shitty love songs! It's so not Punk!"

_Love songs?_ Arnold felt a buzzing in his blood, an electric galvanism that threatened to animate his body into alien and impossible configurations; his skin leapt with excitement. _Are they about me?_

Instantly Arnold recognized the ego in his question. How small of him, he felt, to assume that Helga was only capable of feeling affection for him. Helga was enormous. Within her oceans there were depths he could never fathom. It was a puny assumption on his behalf that everything was bent towards him.

"Is Patty here?" Arnold needed to change topics. Letting his thoughts linger in the unwelcome garden of uncertain romances brought squirming anxiety to his guts.

"Yeah! She's totally hammered!" Harold cackled with glee, proud of Patty in a way that Arnold couldn't understand, but could recognize just the same. "You wanna come see her?"

"Yeah, I'd like that." Arnold was ready to proactively try to find more of his friends. Harold was just the foul smelling beacon he needed to call out to the rest of PS118, summoning their scattered attentions.

Harold shouldered through a group of preppy looking kids, cruelly forcing his bulk physically through them. "ExCUSE me, got a V.I.P. coming through! And Arnold's here too!" Harold's obnoxious nasal cackle followed his bad joke. Somehow, it made Arnold nostalgic to hear that braying laugh again.

Arnold followed his old friend, apologetically smiling to the half dozen or so strangers Harold had managed to offend in an instant. Harold was leading him outside to the back yard, he realized, where the crowd fanned out and clustered into familiar groups. Three speakers as tall as him stood on the small concrete porch, pumping out a funky groove of Poolside and Burial that Brainy was mixing together into a cooled down, slower tempo writhe in the buzzing air of celebration.

Arnold was shoved against the wall almost as soon as he left the building, pushed back and up into the brick of the doorway by two people in the frenzy of what seemed to be a fistfight. Arnold threw his hands up in loosely held fists in front of his face, curling his shoulders over to protect his torso automatically. Six years of boxing in South American gyms had given him rudimentary instincts in self defense that served him well when a large fist haphazardly thudded against his bicep, immediately numbing the entire limb.

"WHOA watch it, you stinking cow!" A familiar voice screeched in surprise, a skinny figure in what appeared to be an extremely fine charcoal gray suit with shiny black hair and designer-looking sunglasses pressed against him. Arnold sucked in a breath of surprise as another fist from the aggressor collided with his shoulder from the other side of the well dressed victim pressed against him.

"CURLY?!" Arnold growled in surprise, looking over Curly's shoulder to see the short flame red Mohawk and row of spiked hair atop the tall figure of the tattered-clothing clad girl drunkenly throwing hands.

"P-patty! Patty stop, it's Arnold, I'm _behind_ Curly!" Arnold cried out in surprise and shock, the crowd of people gathered in excited attention around the sorry excuse for a fistfight. Really, to the gathered gawkers, it was just a big street girl pounding on some rich boy while a tan-looking kid in a pink flannel shirt got caught in the mess.

Arnold shoved Curly off of him with a grunt, sending the awkward boy bowling into Patty, who fell back and against the meaty wall of Harold. Arnold steadied himself, watching Patty's bare brows-totally devoid of any hair at all, and dotted with fierce looking metal studs-lift high when she looked at Harold with something that looked like adoration in her eyes. "Oh heeey, baby." She slurred. "Come to help me knock heads, my little dumpster Casanova?" Patty's strong looking hand, ringed with metal and leather bangles, caressed Harold's dirty beard affectionately.

"Yeah, babe! Who's the suit?" Harold seemed to completely disregard that up until a second ago, Patty had been wailing in Arnold in an attempt to pound Curly.

"The _suit_, you pathetically destitute street_ trash_, is Thaddeus Gammelthorpe, and I could sue your porcine_ grandchildren_ for this!" Arnold brushed his chest off while Curly lectured the two punks who seemed wrapped around each other, totally unaware of Curly's outrage. "Hey! Listen to me! I buy and sell companies with payrolls larger than this entire_ party_ on the day to day!"

Arnold regarded Curly with an instant level of understanding and disgust. "I don't think they care how rich you've gotten, Curly," he blithely explained.

"Oh, hello, Arnold. Thank you for cushioning my fall. And for taking those hits for me. You always had a keen eye for justice. Glad to see that your innate altruism has blossomed into protecting the weak like a proper man." Curly's voice dripped with pretension and an audible note of disgust for everything around him.

"Yeah, great Curly, but let's let Sid and Nancy over here breed next to the speakers and get some space. I have questions to ask you." Arnold got some distance from Patty and Harold, watching Harold's thick hand feel up her fishnets and tiny jean shorts from the corner of his eye. _I guess they grew up a little._

Curly and Arnold settled for standing underneath a large, drooping oak that was wrapped from root to leaf in festive christmas lights. Arnold rubbed the spot on his arm where Patty had slugged him, still feeling the intent to seriously injure or maim in the ghostly throbbing of the impact.

"Wanna tell me why Patty started throwing punches, Curly?"

"Thaddeus, actually. And as I'm fortunate enough to not be a zookeeper, how am I supposed to anticipate the juvenile outbursts of a beast like that?" Curly was inspecting the jacket of his finely tailored suit. Arnold's eye caught a glimpse of the designer label on the inside of his lapel when Curly bent over. _Michael Kors._ _This piece of shit came to a frat party in a three thousand dollar suit. Come on._

"Sorry, Thaddeus, but do you think it had anything to do with throwing comments around like 'I buy and sell companies daily?' Something tells me Patty's not exactly a receptive audience to that sort of thing." Annoyance in his voice, Arnold tried to figure out what in the hell happened to Curly. Harold made sense, and so did Patty, in the same way that Harold did. Arnold needed to puzzle out the strange destiny of the boy he used to know as Curly.

"If you must know, that hell-weaned high school dropout was exercising what few brain cells devoted to memory I'm sure she has_ left_ to intentionally antagonize me. Big surprise, she was only just about the most miserable example of humanity in high school, a very paragon for failure and bitter futility."

"Yeah but what happened?" Arnold was losing patience with Thaddeus quickly.

"She had the audacious gall to bring up my nervous breakdown, you nosey _prat_. I wasn't about to let that slide anymore; I am a _Wolf!_ I don't leave challenges to my self-made success and superiority go unchallenged. I cut her down immediately, reminding her how she slept on a city-hall spiked sidewalk last Christmas Eve while I slept soundly with my face between the right and left breasts of a supermodel whose name I didn't even bother to learn._ That's_ what happened, and then you collided with me, nearly dislocating my shoulder, and then that blood-soaked she-beast starts swinging. You're all a sorry lot of buccaneers and hooligans, and Hell take you all!" Thaddeus's voice raised in pitch higher and higher the more he progressed, and Arnold became more and more infuriated the further the disgusting tale was told. By the end, Arnold felt like punching Thaddeus himself.

_But what is that about a nervous breakdown?_ "I heard you're in New York. Wall Street?" Arnold took a guess, based on the suit and Thaddeus' remarkably myopic attitude.

"For once, you seem keenly observant, Arnold. I'd buy you a cookie, but bakeries usually can't break a hundred."

Everything made sense now. Curly had always been off, but Arnold had attributed his hyperactivity and childish psychosis to attention-starved thrill seeking behavior. A boy that thrived on negative attention, similarly to Helga, but who also seemed to lack the basic empathic need to be connected to someone in the way she did. It made sense that his highly unstable, grandiose exaggeration of a personality would translate especially well to the sociopathic world of hedge fund management, speculative trading, and hostile acquisitions of Wall Street.

Arnold had seen enough. Curly-_Thaddeus_, he reminded himself-was a problem too beyond his caring at the moment. He had other, blonder, more attractive fish to fry.

"Keep your cookie, Thaddeus. You might wanna just head home early tonight. I think you're done here."

"Nice try, Romeo, but I won't step a foot towards sanctuary until_ she_ acknowledges me." Thaddeus' eyes narrowed behind his narrow frame glasses.

"Rhonda?"

"Wellington Lloyd," Thaddeus finished. "The one and only. I didn't drag my expensively manicured ass all the way back to this sorry _slum_ just to have her cold shoulder me all night. A courteous _hello_ would be peaches and cream."

_Again with the dessert references. I wish I had read more Freud._ Arnold regarded Thaddeus carefully. Somehow, somewhere in that vicious, baked-goods focused shell of a man was the boy he remembered. Even if he was buried deep beneath expensive clothes and a career in callous evil, Curly still wanted attention from the one person who was virtually guaranteed to never offer it up.

"I think if you want to get Rhonda's attention, you're going to have to drop the act, Curly."

"Act? Arnold, who exactly do you think you are?" Thaddeus sneered at Arnold, an ugly expression on his sour face.

"I'm just saying, the odds that Rhonda will respond positively to you go up exponentially if you don't act like such a stuck up horse's ass." Arnold didn't mind being candid with Curly. Curly clearly didn't mind being candid with him.

"Wake up call, Shortman. You've been gone for ten years. Not just any ten years, but all the important ones. You have _no idea_ who I am, you don't know anything about me or what's happened to me or where I've been. You think you can just march up to me like when we were kids and set me straight? There's nothing to_ straighten out_. I'm Thaddeus Maplethorpe, young and rich and powerful, and I don't answer to you or Rhonda. You insult and belittle me with your false concern and prettily painted up advice. Go moon over Helga like we all know you're here to do, and get out of my life."

_Stubborn prick_. Arnold couldn't decide if he had the patience to set Thaddeus straight, help him see the gross and insidious way he'd chosen to live his life, or if he should just write the whole situation off and go back to the kitchen to wait for Rhonda and Gerald.

The old, younger Arnold would have opted to try to help. The newer, older Arnold didn't have the patience.

"Alright, Thaddeus. I don't mind leaving you to your money or your misery. I'm headed back to the kitchen to wait for Rhonda and Gerald. You enjoy whatever it is you enjoy, and have a nice life. I certainly won't be in it any more." Arnold walked away, just barely catching the sad, disappointed look on Curly's face as he pushed past Harold and Patty, now thoroughly entwined in a passionate, extremely public dry hump, and disappeared back into the crowded kitchen.

* * *

Arnold sighed patiently, trying not to sound so tired to the sweet girl on the other line. Lila was silent. She's heard the exasperation, but chose not to comment on it.

"Look, Lila, I'm just going to a party with all our old friends, and it's just going to be a nice night. There's nothing to worry about." Lies in his mouth, spoken to Lila, tasted like old stale citrus.

"You say these things to try to console me, in your ever so sweet way, but I'm not naive and I'm not stupid. Arnold, there's going to be a lot of pent up emotion at the party - I just want you to be extra careful."

"I'm sure everything will be just fine." Arnold had been telling himself that every moment since his fateful chat with Helga days before. He almost believed it.

"I'm ever so hopeful you're right. Are we going to talk about Helga at all?" Arnold winced. Helga was the one topic he didn't ever want to discuss with Lila.

A long pause while he tried to calibrate what he wanted to day was filled with the ambient sounds of street symphonies of traffic and humanity outside his boarding house window.

"I just don't know what there is to discuss anymore."

"Well we can talk about how I've got your ring on my finger, but she's still on your mind. An awful lot. She's why you're there. It is uncomfortable for you to talk about, but I know there are a lot of ever so confusing unresolved issues from your past with her. I'm here though, I can talk to you. You can talk to me, even about her."

Arnold wasn't so sure, and also intensely uncomfortable. He deeply cared about LIla. He loved her, powerfully, and was fiercely loyal to their history and to her bright and impossible-to-defeat spirit. Where Helga had written him but a single letter of pithy, forgettable content, LIla and Arnold had become pen pals of legendary frequency and intimacy. Hundreds of thousands of words had been exchanged between them over the years: confessions of fears, loves, dreams, and ambitions; detailed accounts of their daily lives; meaningless small talk of the local weather exchanged like two old men in Central Park; and finally, once things became serious, heartfelt words of affection and tenderness, slowly built into Lila's roaring devoted passion and Arnolds quiet supportive doting. Arnold and Lila knew each other perhaps better than Arnold and Gerald, and their bond had grown to become something resembling siblings, in Arnold's eyes, yet something more that mixed into the confusing territory of lovers.

The untimely and sudden death of her parents at her farm home had shattered the bubble Lila had been living in. At Arnold's suggestion, she came to visit him. And that's when the accident happened. And that's when he promised her to always be by her side. The ring had been a formality; already in his heart Lila was married to a piece of his soul, and would remain buried there always.

Even if Helga had been buried there first, deeper and more profoundly.

"It just hurts to talk about, Lila. I don't like making you upset. And besides, I already talked to Helga and _nothing happened_."

"Oh but I recognize that tone, Arnold. You're ever so upset and conflicted that nothing happened. If I heard relief, I'd say 'come home to me, hurry,' but all I hear is hesitation at an open door. But it's okay, I understand, Arnold. She's a very big part of you. She represents everything you miss about your life in Hillwood, but she's also someone you miss very much. It's okay. You have every right to get closure. I trust you to behave like the perfectly oh-so gallant gentleman you are. But I don't think I trust Helga very much, I'm sorry to say."

Arnold was not convinced there was anything to worry about for Lila. Nothing in what he had experienced in the last ten years matched up to the childlike fantasies he'd entertained in lonely nights, on hot days, or even in the middle of conversations. Helga vibrated inside him with an energetic harmonics that was troublesome for its persistence. Once he had figured out how he felt, and had accepted what she was to him, there wasn't anything he could do but love her. But now, he was nervous and sick to say, it seemed to have all been a fantasy built on ghosts and shadows and smoke. What did he have left, except a closed chapter in his life he needed to discard, and move forward with Lila?

For one, he had the nagging persistent doubt that Helga had not been telling the truth. He knew it wasn't Helga's actions that had hurt and haunted him so thoroughly since his fateful return, it was his brain's stubborn reaction against it.

"Helga won't do anything, Lila. Helga had ten years to do something. She had the coffee shop to do something. She's had days since to do something. It's over. After the party, I'll help settle the affairs at the boardinghouse like I planned and come to the farm. We'll talk about what comes next then, and get ready for Christmas. Together."

Lila sighed longingly. "You know I love you very much."

"I know. Thank you," Arnold quietly replied, staring up at the dusk sky streaking reds and oranges across a deepening blanket of purple overhead through his old room's skylight.

"Just try to have fun, but be ever so cautious. For my peace of mind at least."

"You keep saying be cautious, and I keep telling you that there's nothing to worry about." Arnold snapped, getting exhausted of this circling conversation.

"Arnold, there's no need to get cross." Lila's voice was remarkably stern. "I'm partially paralyzed, not made of glass. If you don't stop tiptoeing around me, I shall go absolutely bonkers. Be honest with me, Arnold, please."

"Alright, fine," he huffed. He couldn't identify why she was making him so frustrated. It was an itchy thing, a wiggling feeling in his chest, where guilt usually lurked, but in this moment he felt only bitter resentment. It made him want to vomit.

"Do you intend to confront Helga again, or do you expect she will attempt to confront you?" Lila was remarkably calm when she asked the question. Something high in the way she asked him made Arnold uneasy; something was hidden in her tone, and to Arnold, it meant she was hiding something at all. It was thoroughly out of character for her.

"Maybe."

"Maybe to both?"

"Maybe." Arnold felt his jaw grinding.

"I think I would be much more comfortable if you tried to get closure as I have suggested in a much more public, less alcohol-lubricated environment. But short of growing wings and flying up there, it doesn't seem like I can do very much to stop whatever will happen." Lila sounded sad, but Arnold also heard the hint of a confirmed fear in her small voice.

"Lila, nothing will happen that you need to worry about. I keep saying that."

"Try to see it from my perspective for a second, Arnold. My _fiancé_ is going to a big party thrown in his honor where his longtime fantasy girl and boyhood crush will be, _probably drunk_, and when only days before the two of them had a painful reunion that left said fiancé with ever so many questions and suspicions that he won't _talk to me about_."

Acid anger jolted through him, and Arnold felt the tension, confusion, and anxiety about the party boil into words in his mouth, word that coiled around his tongue and teased it into motion. A surprised gasp filled his lungs with reluctant air and the panic of this immediate bolt of heated bitterness pushed those fateful words out, cruelly pinning them in the air to hang with echoing, gravity-defying audacity.

"I just don't know what I want anymore!"

Silence. Arnold heard the wind rustle something on Lila's end. She was outside, probably on her porch alone at sunset. He pictured her holding her phone to her face, looking in pain up at the hateful orange ball of the sun as it grew engorged with the last ghosts of the day and sank beneath waving, scarlet-lit fields of grain that stretched out forever in front of her. A sea of bitter magenta that mocked her with every beauty she couldn't appreciate for the words he had let loose from their awful cage.

Arnold's phone lit up with a notification against his face. He turned the screen to look at it, the call still proceeding in grim silence as he checked the text he had just got. It was a number he didn't recognize.

A square picture-probably Instagram filters, Arnold recognized-filled the messages window in a text from a stranger. In sepia tones, a pink shoebox with what looked like "_Important_" written on the side, the top open. Empty. A pink ribbon rolled up next to it.

It was from Helga. The hot sick feeling in his chest he got when he realized that alarmed him.

Arnold closed his messages app hastily and brought the phone to his face. Lila still hadn't said a word. He had to fix this, no matter how much it hurt them. There wasn't any other honest way to face what needed to be faced. Anything else would be callous, treacherous.

"Lila," he began hesitantly. That picture confused him. He couldn't divine the meaning, but he knew it was significant. She was trying to tell him something about the party he was going to be at in a few hours.

"Yes, Arnold?" Lila finally answered him, taking nearly as long to respond as he had taken to speak first.

"I don't know what I want anymore. You should take that ring off your finger until I figure it out. It's not fair to either of us that it's there while this is going on. I will find out. That much I know. I can't promise anything to anyone anymore, I just can't. We're in frontier. But I will keep the first promise I made to you, no matter what happens. I will _always_ be by your side, no matter what happens at this party or the next party or anything else in life."

Emotion choked Lila when she pushed his name through her lips. "_Arnold._"

"I'm sorry, Lila. We both know I'm right."

"Arnold, _please,_ wait." She was choking back a lump in her throat, her voice cracking.

"I love you very much. I always will. I'll be able to tell you if that means I can be your husband soon. Someday, soon." Arnold held back the feelings of panic and uncertainty. He had to do this. The feeling he got when he saw Helga's picture confirmed the worst for him.

"_Arnold_." All Lila could do was say his name. Arnold felt his eyes sting with guilty, angry tears. He hated that he had put himself in this awful position with his stupid reckless need to fix everyone broken. He had done this. He had to fix it. He had one more thing to fix before he could be with anyone. Before he could be himself again. His life had been on hold for ten years because of this mess, and he needed an empty slate to put an ending to the story once and for all.

"I love you Lila, but we're broken up. I'll call you tomorrow morning. I love you, I love you, I love you. Lila Sawyer, I love you." It all gushed out of him, pushed from him by a sudden tsunami of memory, every happy moment he'd ever had with her, every loving letter, every fragment of joy she had given him. Ripping it out of himself was the second hardest thing he had ever done.

"Goodbye, Arnold," Lila choked out. The line went quiet. She hung up first.

Arnold set the phone on his bed and held his face in his hands.

He looked at his hands with disgust. _I'm so fucked up._

* * *

"There you are, man," Gerald rushed up to Arnold, a grin on his face. "Rhonda told me you'd be in the kitchen. Couldn't sit still for just a second could ya?" Gerald was in a red satin shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a skinny black tie clipped to the scarlet garment with a silver tie clip. He wore a white belt looped into fine black trousers. Arnold was impressed. Gerald cleaned up well.

Arnold exchanged his secret handshake with Gerald automatically, smiling back at his friend. He has no idea about Lila. Arnold knew that Gerald and Phoebe had gone to talk to Lila without telling him. Lila had told him, but didn't tell him what they talked about. That meant it was either about him and Lila, or about him and Helga.

Either way, it appeared that Lila hadn't contacted either of them since earlier. Arnold moved out of the way of someone trying to get past him, stepping closer to Gerald and taking the opportunity to whisper conspiratorially.

"So where's Helga? I'm tired of bumping around all these strangers. I wanna get this over with"

"Get what over with, my man? The party? No way, man, I put this shit together in your honor. Not about to end the night before the main event." Gerald wagged his eyebrows at Arnold, his smile wide.

"Yeah but what even is the main eve-" Arnold started, before someone bumped into him hard, pushing him away from Gerald and nearly knocking him from his feet.

Arnold grunted, getting his balance and watching Gerald lift Eugene up by the hand. "Eugene!" Arnold's smile was wide, his joy genuine. "Eugene, are you alright?"

The skinny boy turned his undercut-shaved head, a curly pompadour swooped back over his ginger eyebrows. He smiled his too-wide smile, a dappling of freckles crinkling up in his nose and cheeks. "Arnold! I'm okay!" Eugene fell into Arnold in a hug, warm and affectionate. Arnold couldn't help but notice how little he was.

Eugene pulled away, still smiling, and getting a good look at Arnold in his pink and creamsicle-colored flannel shirt with pearl snap buttons, the sleeves rolled up to expose his tanned arms. Arnold thought he saw Eugene bite his lower lip, before Eugene gasped up at him, "You look amazing. Just the same."

Eugene had come out to Arnold in a letter. Arnold had been one of the first people Eugene had told, and had been honored and touched at the gesture of confidence and kindness Eugene had paid him. He'd never forget the words Eugene wrote to him.

"_The courage you taught me as a young boy gives me the confidence to be who I am as a young man."_

Nothing had gone right for Eugene since the day he'd come out, although anyone could argue that nothing had gone right for the unfortunate young man since the day he was born. It wasn't because of any unfortunate bigotry that Eugene suffered, though. It was his blind optimism that had done him in.

Not long after Eugene had come out to his friends and family at the age of 18, he had fallen in love with the school's drama instructor. The affair was brief. Everyone knew the sad tale now, and it pained Arnold to recall the way that Eugene's name had been dragged through the mud by the man when their passionate affair came to light. Eugene, ever kind and incapable of any cruelty whatsoever, silently accepted every accusation slung his way, and watched his future at Theater School dry up and disappear.

Now he worked at the town's only magic shop, still dreaming of a day when his name didn't carry the stain any longer.

Arnold smiled with kindness at his old friend, hugging him again. "It's really great to see you again, Eugene. I really wanted to see you."

Eugene smiled up at him, shrugging his thin shoulders under a brightly colored, peacock-patterned keffiyeh that was draped over a simple cream-colored deep v-neck t-shirt. He wore slim, white and yellow plaid chino shorts, and small white flats. Arnold thought he looked like a little candle, a bright color in a dark room wherever he went.

"Gerald, has he seen Helga yet?" Eugene turned to Gerald, a curious expression on his face.

"Everybody keeps asking me that," Arnold grumbled. "I would like to see everybody else, too."

"Oh, I know, Arnold. But we're not why you're here. It's okay, everybody knows. We threw this party for you two," Eugene smiled simply, sunnily. "She's in the living room dancing. We should go watch." Something glittered in Eugene's smiling eyes.

Gerald laughed a little bit. "All right, why not? It's about damn time anyway."

Arnold looked at the two of them, who were standing expectantly before him, waiting for his decision.

"Okay. Let's go." Arnold's friends grinned at him, leading the way through the kitchen to the main room where Brainy's DJ table was set up. Where Helga was dancing.

_What is happening to me?_ Arnold couldn't recall ever feeling the intense anticipatory buzz in his head, the frantic excitement that was like a freeform jazz heartbeat. He'd never been this excited in his life. Every step behind him seemed to blend into a vague narrative, and in every instant he was aware of what piece of spacetime he occupied, without any understanding of how it was he arrived there. He simply seemed to be getting pulled towards an inexorable future by an unseen destiny. Keen awareness sharpened every detail while he floated downstream in this karmic boulevarde. Now he was stepping into the living room. Now he was turning his shoulders to squeeze between two separate groups of people, backs building barriers of their unseen bubbles. Now he was looking at Brainy, who was playing Air's "Electronic Performers" and bobbing his torso to the immaculate beat. Now he stood between Gerald and Eugene, transfixed by the ghostly spectre of every instant and moment of his past manifest in the moving, twisting shape of Helga Pataki. Now he was here. Before he was not as close to her as he was now. In his future, another step he would forget would bring him even closer. He had no idea how many it would take, or what path the impossibly-defined, ever-disappearing history of his passage would shape. He simply saw the terminal point of the journey, and there she was.

Helga didn't notice Arnold. He was grateful for the blessing, unsure how he would manage an interaction now. He knew for one thing that he finally knew what he wanted. How strange, he felt, that the mind can tell you what the heart wants, and then offer no insights in this necessary acquisition. If the mind was the heart's way of grasping needful things, then it was a blind guide, driven by unshakable ambition yet lacking the essential tools to arrive at the finish line.

Gerald nudged Arnold, a knowing grin on his face. "Take a picture, Arnold, it'll last longer." Arnold's face pinked, aware of how he was gawking without needing Gerald to point it out.

"He's just taking her all in, Gerald. Helga can be quite the performer." Eugene slipped a small hand around Arnold's bicep, pulling him forward. "Let's get a closer look."

Arnold didn't move at first, but Eugene's gentle tug put a step behind him, and then another. A dozen steps glew like beacons behind him, alighting the past where he was further away from Helga. He thought he could see the unearthly glowing response of the steps he would take before him, pulling him forward.

Eugene slipped from his side, pulling around behind him. He felt two small hands slide onto his back and rest there for a moment, before he was pushed fully forward. He looked behind him in a brief half-panic; he couldn't see Gerald or Eugene any longer. Wherever they were in the crowd, it didn't matter.

Helga Pataki was dancing right next to him. His body responded automatically, a rhythm within him lifting his limbs, placing them here and there, shaking his hips and rolling his shoulders. Somehow, Arnold found that he wasn't just dancing next to Helga, he was dancing with her. A fierce and hot blush reddened his tanned features, but he couldn't tear his gaze from Helga's closed eyes, wondering what she would do if she opened them to find the male body she was energetically dancing with was him.

He got his answer as her large blue eyes opened when his hand found itself on her hip. A spark of surprize started the flash-fire of hot anger on her face, but when their eyes met, her mouth hung open and no sound escaped. She didn't stop moving, she didn't look away. Arnold's mind was a sick riot, alarm bells and warning sirens in his imagination blaring. _Escape. Get away. She is the Death of us._

Helga bit her lower lip, and turned her face away as she kept dancing. Their bodies were close, and his hand felt like it was made of flame where it sat on her hip. He could smell her. The warmth of her body and the delicate floral scent of whatever perfume she was wearing fogged his mind. Helga is dancing with me willingly. Arnold could hardly believe the moment he was sharing with her. Only in fantasies had he shared a passionate salsa with her, chest to chest, or escaped to a New Orleans jazz club together for a night of frenzied swing. Here was the real thing, though, and she was pressing her back against his chest, her hands touching his legs tentatively. He felt the furnace of her palms trace along his hips and touch his belly. His face was fire.

The song suddenly transitioned to something much more fast paced, the beat pounding up into a staccato frenzy. Helga's head whipped around, a sloppy grin on her face that she was trying to make fierce with an angry, high arch of her eyebrows. Her hip moved, and she was no longer being touched by Arnold. She put distance between them, brought out of the spell by the sudden change in the music.

"Wh-what's the big idea, Football head? Who said you could d-dance with me?" her voice wavered, almost shaking. She had stopped dancing, and stood holding her arms, wrapping herself in their strong cage walls. Parting the two of them.

"I, uh," Arnold's throat was dry. He couldn't explain in this crowd what he was doing when he barely knew it himself. "I just saw you dancing alone and-"

"And you thought you could just jump in?" Helga shot back, her face still very red. He noticed the sparkle of makeup on her eyelids, the glisten of gloss on her pouty lips. I've never seen makeup on her before. A new surprise. Helga was full of firsts tonight. He wondered what surprises were still to come from her.

"Well...to be fair, you danced back with me." Arnold could barely think, could barely breathe. "You were practically in my lap." The words fell out of his mouth as he watched, helpless.

Helga's eyes narrowed. "It could have been _anyone_-I was just dancing, it's not like I had any fun because it was _you_." Helga's voice became sharp and clear, no hesitation.

"I...need to go back outside," came his reluctant reply. A hot cloud in his mind threatened to totally envelop him. Helga's surprise was obvious, but she didn't try to stop him.

"Fine, do whatever pleases. I have to get on stage anyway." Helga's blush faded, and she waved away the moment between them with a hand.

"Whatever you say," Arnold smiled as he repeated his familiar childhood mantra. "Helga." Somehow it caught her by surprise. He watched her stare back at him with a confused and angry and slightly disappointed look on her face. The steps behind him, closer to her. The steps before him would bring him back to her again, he knew. All of life's paths took detours now and then.

* * *

Arnold folded his arms and leaned against the tree, watching from only six feet as Brainy meticulously checked and re-checked every instrument on the outside stage in the back yard. His retreat had been fortunately timed. He'd managed to get a perfect spot to watch Helga's band play, comfortable against a tree and slightly to the left of the stage. He'd get to see Helga right up front, without any distractions.

Oddly, he couldn't see any of the rest of PS118 out in the backyard where the rest of the entire party had started to gather. He was more and more glad for his early spot grab as time progressed, because the press of people that began to collect up front would have made it impossible for him to find a decent position now.

Eugene and Sheena-_Sheena!_ Arnold smiled with surprise. _She looks vibrant in her sun dress_!-appeared on stage with Brainy, each holding a corner of a big white sheet. Sheena stood on her tiptoes, lifting the corner of the sheet into the canopy of trees above the stage, and clipped it into place. Arnold's breath held in his throat as he watched Eugene shakily climb one of the tall amps in the back, finally getting on top and clipping the sheet taut into place. The sheet now stretched from one side of the stage to the other, behind the drum kit. Eugene flashed a thumbs up towards the house, grinning, and a bright light shone on stage.

Arnold turned to see Phoebe guiding the beam of a projector on the roof of the house down towards the sheet. The light shifted and shook as she adjusted the angle, and finally shone a haunting blue on the stage, illuminating Brainy as he tuned a guitar.

_Are they all in on this?_ Arnold couldn't help but wonder what else would happen tonight. It wouldn't be unlike the kids of PS118 to work together on something like this, but it was certainly odd that it would be for Helga.

Arnold could barely hold in the shout of surprise that leapt out of his throat when Gerald stepped on stage, picking up the bass guitar and shouldering the strap calmly. Gerald, too?! Arnold gawked, watching Gerald pluck a few strings and test the tension in the neck with his strong fingers. Gerald noticed Arnold's stare, and flashed him a wink and a grin. Arnold barely registered the surprise when Stoop Kid stalked out in a sleeveless tuxedo and sat at the drum kit.

_Lila was right to be suspicious_, Arnold realized. This was planned - it reeked of one of those crazy all-or-nothing plans they used to cook up as kids. As he watched Gerald move around confidently on the stage, illuminated by the ghostly blue of the projector, he was sure without doubting that it was his best friend who had been part of this. Gerald was on stage with Helga's band; there simply wasn't any way he would consent to such a thing unless it matched up to some plan.

The three boys nodded to each other, and among the milling riot of conversation in the backyard, the amplifier began to ring out a ghostly, metallic note that reverberated hauntingly. Arnold's eyes narrowed, trying to make out the fine details on the stage in front of him through the billow of a smoke machine which had just started up. In his periphery he saw Stinky's face over the large fan at stage right, sporting a curled up handlebar mustache and tending to the machine with a wide smile.

Brainy was playing his guitar, the single note he was picking out ringing out in the hot late Summer evening, bringing the crowd to a consensus of cheer. People whooped and whistled, but the crowd was uniformly bent in anticipatory cheering for the band.

Brainy's arm went wide and he strummed a large note, high and pretty, and shook his guitar gently to reverb the note. Arnold felt the hair on his arms stand up when Gerald started in with the bassline, solid and complementary to the alternating, wavering fragility of Brainy's haunting notes.

For several long bars, they held the duet, Gerald walking them through a playful bassline, Brainy embellishing the journey with whimsy. Stoop kid started in, a very simple 4:4 beat with alternating snare and kick drum accents. The three of them concentrated on their instruments, the song continuing but not progressing or alternating from the same four bars played over and over.

Arnold's breath caught in his teeth when she stepped out onto stage, a blonde spectre floating to her guitar and shouldering it quickly. Behind the roar of excited blood in his ears, he heard the crowd begin to cheer with enthusiasm. Without taking his eyes off Helga, he heard people in the crowd call out her name, and something else.

"_Orphan!"_

Helga paced nervously from end to end of the stage, not yet playing but looking back and forth from out into the crowd and back at Brainy. Her pacing betrayed her heart to Arnold; she was nervous. Extremely nervous. Helga stopped in front of the microphone, pausing for a moment before shaking her head and moving away, saying something he couldn't hear to Brainy. Brainy, Gerald, and Stoop Kid repeated the same measure they had just played, extending the introduction of the song while Helga gathered herself.

Arnold's eyebrows went up when he watched her pull a beer from behind one of the smaller amps, pulling from it deeply before she walked back to the microphone, scanning the crowd for something. For someone. For him.

When her eyes landed on his, her hand automatically struck her guitar, an ethereal, chrome-steel sound screamed from her amp, gently reverberating and pouring through the soundscape Brainy and Gerald had put into place. Someone in the crowd hollered, a high whoop of joy at the beauty of the sound. Helga strummed her guitar, pulling from those strings the strange phantoms of smoke and steel that tugged Arnold's eye contact with her deeper.

Without breaking that intimate stare, Helga's mouth opened and her smokey, passionate voice sang out, landing on the right bar with the sweet distortion she bent with her guitar and that Brainy and Gerald mixed with steady story-book music.

"_Baby, I get nervous,  
__Just a-being in your service.  
__Words are full of indecision,  
__They evince the troubled nimble wit,"_

Arnold's chest tightened, and his breathing stopped. Helga's voice was beautiful. Within the shaking, nervous tremble she wove the heartfelt sweetness he'd always seen in her, edged with the dangerous scratch of a lifetime of troubles. As she confessed. As her ribcage opened and exposed in front of everyone they knew and more besides the contents of her heart.

"_Oh, nothing in return  
__But storm and pessimism 'stead of dreamin',  
__Being good for me and  
__Just a-standing in your pretty prison.  
__You're standing here,"_

Helga's voice rose and fell with the gentle rocking of the melody, accompanied by the impressively thickly layered sounds that Brainy poured out to join Helga's high, ghostly sounds. She paused her, half a bar passing before she closed her eyes, squeezing them shut as if looking at Arnold was a painful ordeal that she could no longer withstand.

"_You think you love me,  
__Don't you?"_

She held every long vowel, pulling the question out from her lungs, high and sweet as Spring, a gentle tremble of fear behind it. The line was long, and soft, and she opened her eyes slowly as she sang, shaking her head sadly while she posed the question.

"_Maybe you're the presence  
__That begs needing other reasons.  
__I got "Summer still looks pretty,"  
__I got hungry for the hungry seas.  
__Oh, living for the people  
__That have nothing but their blues,  
__And I have nothing to be nervous about,  
__Hungerin' over you"_

Stoop Kid's steady rhythm, tirelessly drummed out, counted the beats that Arnold's heart managed to click out as Helga's song pinioned him where he was, helpless. He'd never imagined that he would hear sounds so wonderful, so massive from a four piece band composed of his old friends. He'd always known Helga was a genius, brilliant beyond anyone he'd ever met, and her creativity and passion for art had always been one of the most attractive things about her. But he'd never put something so fragile, so fine, so silvery-hued and white in his mind as the song by Helga's band that filled the air above the trees.

"_In the same rich path  
__You and I align."_

Helga held her vowels again, the last verse pushed up from her tiptoes to throw out above the crowd, out over the building, casting her wish up into the night sky. Arnold's chest heaved, the breath finally rushing from him in desperate need. He had chills, his skin pricked and risen where Helga's voice had touched it. He had never felt as sorry as he did when the song came to its slow conclusion, Helga bent over her guitar and coaxing a last few notes from the precious instrument of her expression.

He felt his hands obey the slow command to clap along with the rest of the gathered party, who so emphatically showed their approval for the offered song that it drowned out the last few seconds of the piece. Arnold watched Helga find his gaze again, a red flush on her cheeks.

She flashed him a confident smile, grabbing the mic and looking back out to the crowd.

"Thanks, thank you, you guys are awesome. We're Orphan, and we're super pumped to see all your faces out there tonight," Helga called out confidently. A few voices whooped their encouragement out to her. Someone whistled. "Aw you guys are too sweet. Keep it in your pants," she sneered, and the audience laughed. Arnold found himself laughing along, somehow unbelievably proud of her in this moment, as if he felt some shared sense of ownership over the whole thing. Helga turned back to the band, saying something outside the range of the mic, then turned back to the crowd with a smiling snarl.

"This is '_Tibetan Pop Stars_.'"

Her hand savagely strummed the guitar, a low and dirty chord ripping from the amp and shocking the vestigial pleasant syrup of the previous song from his bones. This was a different style of song all together, reminiscent of 90's grunge or girl rock. Right away, he felt like this suited her more. Perhaps she chose to open with that far more sensitive, revealing song as a way to communicate something. That first and foremost were those sweet feelings, tender and difficult to express for her, that she could confess to him. Feelings of nervousness, of being unsure, but of being hopeful and reverent of the dream of being with him.

Arnold wondered if he was putting too much thought into it for the briefest of moments before the song began, Helga's voice starting in a lower, grungier growl.

"_How content are with ones with simple demands?  
__They meet their fiancés cherry picking out in Canada  
__While cursing the river, a seven fingered man  
__His three sleepless wives all equally sick of him"_

Immediately, Arnold was thrown off balance by the cryptic and unusual lyrics. He could barely follow along, unsure of the meaning. Helga's lyrics felt obfuscated, hidden from immediate understanding. Her voice still carried that sweet undertone, but the overall delivery was harsh.

"_Honey I left to see some action.  
__What's with all these swamps?  
__All I'm passing are hospitals and space-camps,  
__Nobody is asking me "What about your other?"  
__If they did I'd tell them you're a-_

"_Stranger in India.  
__I'm gonna be creeping on you so hard,  
__You're seducing Tibetan pop stars and  
__Wrecking motor-cars"_

The lyrics unfolded, opening meaning to him as he patiently waited for the hook. The song was also about him, though hidden through so many layers of indirect meaning and reference it would make James Joyce quietly applaud. Specially, the song was about the bitterness she'd felt about Arnold's departure. The realization came subtly as he slowly peeled back the layers of misdirection and allusion. Helga wrote guardedly here, less accessibly opening the wound she'd kept hidden for ten years.

"_I know its true,  
__This Is wrong love.  
__Why is everything so expensive?  
__Maybe in two years you can forgive me.  
__I'll be living kinder,  
__I'll have found my place as a-_

"_Stranger in India.  
__Doing OK so far,  
__I'm just waiting on the feathers and tar.  
__You are the only one!  
__You are!"_

In the letters she wrote, what did Helga say to him? What did Helga confess, what did she conceal? Was she laid bare, all secrets left out in the open for Arnold to consider? Did she weave meaning in poetry as she did here, with verse and hook and chorus? As she concluded this most recent verse, her voice carrying the note on the final "are" for several beats, wavering and struggling to keep its strength, the chills on Arnold's arms and neck sharpened, spreading down his back as she lead, voice cracking, into the turn:

"_Nobody deserves you the way that I do,"_

Arnold's stomach flopped cold like a glacial stone. Her voice lifted the phrase up, bringing it from soft and sweet from the sighing "deserves" into a sharper point full of bite on the "do."

"_Nobody deserves you the way that I do,"_

Again she repeated the mantra, an almost sarcastic twinge in her voice, carrying the sour note of remembered loss within it as she re-locked and held eye contact. Suddenly, Helga and the band erupted simultaneously, her mantra repeated with every decibel of gravely and growling force she could muster:

"_NOBODY DESERVES YOU THE WAY THAT I DO, AND,  
__NOBODY DESERVES YOU THE WAY THAT I DO!"_

The terrific force of her. The terrible awe in Helga Geraldine Pataki. Arnold felt his teeth rattle in harmonic resonance to the rage the amplifiers burst. Behind her, the band ripped music from their instruments, pounded the cadence out with fist and foot, arched and bent in passion over the weapons in their hands. Helga's body arched as she played, not pausing for the slightest for Arnold's tempestuous heart keep up.

_"Come home my stranger in India,  
__Because waiting on you is too hard!  
__The reason I haven't written back is because  
__I'm still doing all that bad shit I was."_

_There is what she meant to tell me in the cafe_, Arnold recognized with a flip in his guts. She'd always felt this way. Helga never felt anything but what she felt now, and what she felt then. She had never been able to articulate it to him except once, under duress, and then she rescinded the confession the instant he applied pressure to see if she was being honest. Learning she had been _caught up in the moment_ had left Arnold confused, sickened, sad, and tired. Something had just _clicked _into place when he considered her feelings for him. When he made his confession in the jungle, he extracted hers from her a second time. Now, he was listening to her third.

The song shifted, reverting back to the dramatic chords and calmer hook from before, the catastrophic climax of the song winding down to its simple denouement:

_"My love is average.  
__I'll obey an average law."_

Helga repeated the line twice, singing it the second time with her eyes closed and face squeezed tight in pain. It gored Arnold to see it, to hear her disregard her feelings as somehow less than spectacular. Once in a lifetime. Iconic for an era. He wanted to rush the stage, to grab her by her pigtails and bow and shriek how amazing she was to her. He wanted to fill her lungs with yellow, he wanted to pour into her eyes the flashing reflections of ponds in Winter, and scrape the sounds of the stars out of the sky for her to plug her earphones in. Her song made him feel weak, and small, and elevated within him the desire to break the limits of his mortal shell for her.

Arnold stood confronting the truth, the thing he had chased and known since he was nine. As he watched Helga and her band finish the song and begin right into an energetic, fast instrumental piece that engaged each member's whole bodies, he was forced to reckon with the facts.

He was in love with Helga, and had always been so, and would remain thus until breath no longer dragged from his lungs.

* * *

Several songs into their quite lengthy set, and Arnold had never been on such a wildly emotional and difficult ride in his life. Partly because he had the special awareness that _he_ was the subject matter for most of the songs being played, but also because of the amazing revelation that Helga was having _fun._

_Has she always been this impressive? _Arnold had always considered her to be extremely expressive, emotive, and passionate. He saw within her heart and knew the safeties she put in place to guard herself, and knew that even deeper still there were precious thing, small things of unspeakable rarity that had value beyond reckoning. And he knew her to be powerful, a veritable force of nature. From what Rhonda had told him, she was finally returning back to that old fire.

But the Helga on stage was _commanding. _Her presence on stage captivated not only him, but the entire audience. When she threw her head back, fingers madly noodling a blistering riff, people howled along to her pantomimed roars. When she cradled the microphone and cooed salacious words of leading some unnamed _someone_ to the mattress for a desperate instructive _lesson_, Arnold felt the electric tingle of lust in the air palpably. He marveled at the woman so perfectly in her element. He felt _proud _of her, as well, an ownership of her accomplishments settling in his heart, neatly tucked against his germinating possessiveness.

And so through such dramatic upheavals Arnold felt every inch of him catch up for ten years lost. He felt as if every fiber of his being, every atom was in alignment, pointed at Helga. The thought that he was somehow quantum entangled with Helga brought him profound joy; to think that if an atom moved within him, in her, too, it also moved. The stupid overcomplicated romanticism of his audacious fantasies so immediately penned in the music-driven furor of his heart thrilled him. He danced to the pounding of his heart for her, the raw and visceral expressiveness of her music the backdrop to his inner performance. His blood danced interpretatively to the sound of her name in his mind.

The night was long. The set had been proceeding at pace for well on an hour now. Arnold was exhausted from tip to toe from the physical exertion of all the dancing he was doing in the crowd to Helga's music, and from the emotional trauma she inflicted on him so sweetly with the words she sang, screamed, shrieked, and simply spoke.

Helga was standing, sweating almost all the way through her hot pink top, face flushed and bangs pressed wet to her forehead.

"Well folks," she strummed her guitar, making a muted metallic noise scatter from the amps briefly. "It's been a blast pouring my heart out to you all tonight." She paused, smiling prettily when the crowd cheered for her and her band. "But we gotta get moving and wrap things up before the cops pepper spray the sorry lot of you."

Brainy lifted a hand up, gesturing with a fist towards Phoebe, who was still on the roof of the frat house with the projector, managing the light show. Arnold turned to look back at what she was doing, observing with keen interest as she swapped something in the projector out, plugging it into what looked like a MacBook.

"Please hold, we're having some technical _difficulties_." Helga casually turned to the rest of the band, who were moving amps and their instruments around on the stage, crowding in closer. Arnold watched with surprise as Stinky-Stinky! All tall and thin and long! In a ridiculous Canadian Tuxedo, denim from head to toe! Stinky! With a turquoise bolo tie!-strugged with the large metal form of a steel drum, rolling it on a corner next to Stoop Kid. He flashed Arnold a smile from on stage, settling down in front of the steel drum as Sid came out from behind him with a pair of maracas.

Eugene came out with a tamborine, and so did Rhonda. Harold peacocked onto the stage from behind the white sheet with a beat up looking, band-sticker festooned guitar, the overtightened strings hanging loose from the head. One by one, each of the kids from the class of PS118, minus Phoebe on the roof, a conspicuously missing Curly, and the totally absent Nadine, took a spot on stage, grinning with anticipation and gripping an instrument to play.

"Took you idiots long enough," Helga snorted into the microphone, smiling at the audience. "We're ready? Okay. So this is the last song. It's my newest; I wrote it a couple of days ago. It's about an old friend of mine, and regrets." Helga smiled again as the crowd cheered, a roar of excitement at the strange menagerie of people essembled on stage.

"Thanks, guys. You've been great. _We're Orphan_. This is '_Young and Happy!'" _She pulled away from the microphone as she announced the song, shouting the title out with sudden bursting emotion.

At once, everyone with a guitar began playing in harmony, a tiered collection of remarkably different tones cascading suddenly from the stage in front of Arnold. Helga led the pack, turning to the gathered crowd of their childhood friends, guiding the transition from the harsh, busy intro, and nodding to the percussion section when it was their time to jump in.

Stoop Kid, Sid, and Stinky obliged, the eclectic and frenetic rhythm they pounded out joining Helga's chorus of guitars. Arnold watched with wonder as Gerald enthusiastically played along, his fingers rapidly plucking the strings on his bass. Sheena stood at a keyboard, playing big chords to round out the massive sound crashing over the party.

Helga turned to the microphone, her sing-song voice carrying a slightly country wash to it, the emotive force behind her smokey vocals still heard clearly over the cacophony behind her.

"_Wild things talk.  
__Filthy reservoir, today you are  
__Twenty one, twenty one  
__This car's uninsured  
__I think it still knows how to run  
__Down to Savannah, Georgia  
__No sisters who came before ya  
__Were so true in all  
__The world going dark  
__And changing around you"_

The band behind her played softer, in lower-tempo and with fewer of the gang joining in while she sang. As soon as she finished her first verse, however, they immediately jumped in, each individual, every friend from Arnold's past passionately writhing on stage to pull music up from the gravel in their guts.

"_Someone we love hitched a ride to  
__Minneapolis, and it aged her too soon.  
__Someone, I never told you,  
__I turned my back on.  
__Now I think he hates me, hates me, oh!  
__To be a child again and easily forgiven!  
__But I've done my fair share to  
__Weaken the envied innocent"_

Something about the way that Helga sang the last quartet of lyrics, wishing for an earlier time, a simpler time when they hadn't lost friends to distance and misunderstanding hitched a wad of emotion in his throat. The way all his old friends lost themselves in the frenzy of the moment threatened to overtake him. _All of this was for me?_ He couldn't imagine the value of such a treasure.

Then, the light changed on the projector, and Arnold had to narrow his eyes to focus on the images being shone on stage and his friends alike.

An extremely quick slide show, each frame lasting no more than a second, flashed on screen. Each image was a picture of a page of a letter in familiar pink stationery in familiar pink handwriting, with a pair of familiar hands framing the page in the shot.

Words he couldn't quite catch flashed across the screen as his friends frenzied in their playing. _Arnold. Miss you. Regret. Come home. Always. Love._

Recognizing the gift he was being given, Arnold slowly fell back onto the tree, leaning against it for support while he watched letter after letter flash across the screen in front of him.

Helga's voice returned, the band suddenly quieting as Sheena calmly played a few gentle chords. Her voice was quiet, sweet, and he paused trembling mid-way into her verse:

"_At least with you  
__I got to be Young and-"_

Suddenly every person on stage shouted with all the force they could muster in response to her couplet:

"_HAPPY!"_

Helga called out again, her hand still on her guitar and another holding the microphone tenderly.

"_With you I got to be Young and-"_

Again his friends called out, shouting with grins on their faces:

"_HAPPY!"_

Helga's voice cracked as she completed the call-and-answer, her voice rising high to a strained, difficult sustained note.

"_Now think of all the strangers I've followed,  
__My hands empty!_

"_WITH YOU~!"_

Helga sang those last two words, her voice trembling and rising and falling, until it gave out entirely at the end of "you," and she fell onto her guitar, hand rapidly shredding her regret from those steel and unforgiving strings.

At that time, Arnold saw curly emerge from the side of the stage in front of a large fan that was blowing cooler air on the crowded collection of musicians. he had a huge hefty bag in hand, and found Arnold's eyeline when he rounded the corner. As the band continued to play, he gave Arnold a slightly apologetic smile, and started to shake the bag.

What seemed like snow cascaded from the bag, caught by the blast of wind from the fan and scattered out across the stage and out into the back yard. Paper cranes, thousands of them, tiny and weightless fell like flakes of snow out over the party, landing in cups, getting caught in the tree, settling in outstretched hands.

Arnold's hand felt itself open, and catch a tiny paper crane floating delicately to him while the riot of emotion on stage savaged itself out.

Unfolding it, his breath caught in his throat, and his legs struggled to hold him up. It was Helga's letters. Not only did she put them on display for him, projecting her painstaking recording of them page by page with intimate photos, but here she was, discarding them to the winds. Letting all those unsaid words go, casting them out like lucky snow, paper cranes folded with care and then thrown away. Jewels of care and effort, beautifully sent out and away, saying goodbye to ten years of regret with a single gesture.

"_Then the day came when I  
__Had to tell you a lie.  
__It was to protect you,  
__And that's another lie!"_

Arnold watched Helga as she sang directly to him now, the barrier between them totally gone. There was no place in their world for walls, not when her every secret had just been literally scattered to the fickle winds. There was her apology for the cafe. There she stated her regret, and Arnold accepted her apology silently.

"_In Savannah, Georgia,  
__Tired specters stretch their arms.  
__Couldn't you stay  
__If you looked the other way?"_

Now she finally stated what she had meant to say for ten years. Helga's heart reached out to him, stranded on stage and exposed even as she had the support and backing of everyone they've ever known. Such a spectacle Arnold had never seen. Every nerve of his felt alive and painfully exposed. She wanted him to stay. Helga was begging him to stay.

"_Oh and at least with you I got to be young and-"_

"_HAPPY!"_

"_With you I got to be young and!"_

"_HAPPY!"_

"_Now to think of all the strangers I followed!"_

"_YOUNG, AND HAPPY!"_

"_You~!"_

Helga's voice cracked and failed her again when she completed the chorus and call, holding and sustaining the note of "you" as long as she could before raw emotion pulled her down.

In frustration, her face grimaced and squeezed wet eyes shut. Her hand attacked her guitar, and joining her was the total collapse of the harmony and rhythm of the collected band behind her. Every person's face contorted in concentration while they wildly shook and trembled with the overwhelming sensations their music was wrecking through them.

Arnold trembled and watched as the band's playing tore itself apart, each member's arms getting tired as they strummed, plucked, slammed, or shook. Brainy knelt in front of his amp, wildly shaking his guitar to force hideous distortion and feedback through the instrument, his shirt slick with sweat. Stoop Kid's arms where a white blur emerging from the visibly damp sleeveless tuxedo. Gerald's chest and arms were dark and damp, and he knelt on stage to keep his hand moving. Helga's hand was a blur, her body bent totally over and her teeth bared.

The audience was losing their minds. Arnold had never heard such cheering, such a roar. The riot chorus in the back yard joined the rabid musical implosion, eventually only Brainy and Helga managing to continue to play their instruments after minutes of frenzy. Then, Helga's arm hung limp while Brainy shook and shivered the distortion from the amp, piercing, dirty noise echoing out over the yard.

Helga grabbed the microphone, pulling herself upright, chest heaving while the distortion continued to howl out of their sound system.

"_Oh at least with you, I got to be young and happy~_"

The entire band leapt to life, suddenly grabbing their instruments in a last burst of energy, picking up their organized frenzy, each member attacking their instrument of choice with abandon. Helga ripped her guitar from her own hands and turned it by the neck, brandishing it like an axe. While the rest of the band very quickly lost energy and the song began to end, she roared in frustration and swung her guitar as hard as she could.

A shower of sparks and the loud digital roar of an amp exploded out over the stage, deafening in its finality. The crowd had shifted back suddenly, a wave of people moving to get a safe distance from the sudden fireball that surged out from the amp at its destruction. Helga perched on top of the ruined cube, panting, the band staring at her with shock and surprise.

A massive roar escaped the crowd suddenly, an actual breeze of hot air rushing past Arnold at the force of their exultation. People shrieked and whistled, whooped and howled. Arnold watched in a stunned daze as people literally threw their shirts and undergarments at the stage, people rushing the makeshift platform to touch Helga.

Pulling herself free from the cords and straps of the ruined guitar, Helga turned back towards the crowd, pushing against their outreached hands. Arnold moved towards stage with the wave of humanity, his hands reaching out towards Helga on instinct even as her hand reached out for his in return.

He felt himself pushed up from below, buoyed by the strong supporting hands of several people suddenly taking it upon themselves to hasten his reunion. Helga yelped in surprise when she was pulled down by several hands, propelling her forward on top of the crowd. Arnold laughed out loud, overwhelming exhilaration dizzying him, as the crowd surfed them towards each other. When their hands met, fingers clumsily and quickly lacing together, the crowd under them cheered. The applauding gathering of their childhood friends smiled and shouted encouragement that was drowned out by the roar of excitement under Arnold and Helga.

"What's happening?!" Arnold laughed as he shouted his question to Helga, who was gripping his hand so tight her hands were squeezed white.

"Bunch of nosey busybodies, if you ask me." Helga tried to sound tough, but the joy in her throat robbed any venom she could try to project.

The two of them laughed and cried out in surprise as they were passed from hand to hand, over the heads of everyone in the backyard, and spilled out onto the porch at the opposite end of the yard.

Arnold stood facing this sea of strangers, holding Helga's hand tightly. All of this for him. He couldn't ignore that the crowd had reacted spontaneously, literally pushing the two of them together and leaving an entire house to their care. Every face in the crowd stared back at him.

"Let's go inside, Arnold. They don't need to see what's next." Helga squeezed his fingers urgently, her voice tremulous and nervous. He looked at her sweating, flushing face, and for an instant could not for the sake of anything possibly recall what anyone else had ever looked like, or what anyone he had ever met was named.

Arnold recalled for a brief moment the instant he had stood at the threshold of the airport terminal, hesitant and unsure of his future. In front of him was the open door into the house, cool and dark and empty, and holding a promise of a radically different, unknowable future. Within were consequences.

Letting her pull him ahead into the house, Arnold tried to remember what it was like to feel anything other than this explosive joy, and was glad that he fell short.


	7. Chapter 7 - Mattress Maker

A/N: Trigger Warnings: References to self-harm, Sexual scenarios, Substance abuse, Domestic Hardship. For readers who want to avoid these things, there is a summary at the end of the chapter so you can skip triggering details and still know what happens in the story. I don't have a lot to say about this, other than it's about damn time. Thanks for sticking it out with me this far. Thanks for continuing to read in the future. Please R/R, I live for your feedback.

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 7, The Mattress Maker Makes His Living by the Minute

"People who are sensible about love are incapable of it." - Douglas Yates

* * *

Grave-like quiet filled the still smoke-fogged rooms of the frat house, empty bottles and discarded red Solo cups crowding like ramparts on every available flat surface, and Helga and Arnold moving through the teenage dream together swirled the silence around them into a friendly companion that gladly filled the spaces between them on their journey. Arnold and Helga held hands together, neither able to speak, both perhaps afraid in their own way of the profane clumsiness of language in this sacred time and place. They were finally together, and neither could bring themselves to mortgage the present simple joy of the other's profound presence for some unseen future filled with conversation.

Helga turned her head, afraid just as Orpheus that if she turned to look upon Arnold he would be gone in a flash. Arnold's contented smile returning back at her quelled this anxious phobic thought. _He's really here with me,_ she realized, and the impatient pace of her heartbeat quickened.

Arnold looked at his arm, extending from his shoulder out like a suspension bridge load-bearing wire, reaching out and intimately woven with Helga's own outstretched limb by the tangle of their fingers. _She's finally going to tell me directly what she feels,_ he realized, seeing the path before him leading him right to Helga, even as she guided him there.

Still silent, Helga lead him upstairs to the room she had chosen in advance. She had selected it for its qualities in privacy; she didn't believe for a second that the instant they turned the corner up the stairs that the entire party wouldn't surge into the house to clandestinely eavesdrop on what transpired between them. _We can't have the whole of creation hearing us_, she chided herself privately. If her plan proceeded as she intended, she would be having trouble keeping quiet.

Arnold followed Helga up the stairs, stepping carefully and watching the strong outline of musculature honed by sports and athletic activity on her back. _Why am I turned on by her back?_ He wondered, feeling his face grow hot and his breath quicken at the realization. _Where is she taking me, to be alone?_ Arnold doubted very much that he would remain the gentleman he was raised to be should she sequester him into a private space of _proximity._

Down the little row of rooms at the second floor loft area, past the beer pong table that had been set up, squeezed behind a linen closet and a bathroom, a door of significance loomed before Helga. She paused at its red surface, her free hand touching the wood, feeling the weight and strength in it. _It's really happening. Don't fuck it up, Helga, old girl. He's right here. Don't go all hot/cold on him now, when we're so close._ She gathered her courage, closing her eyes to take in a shaking breath. It was now or never again.

Helga turned at the door, loosening her fingers to completely turn to face Arnold, her hand re-engaging that affectionate tangle with gusto as soon as it was possible.

"Arnold, I have to tell you something important," she started, her voice shaking audibly. She couldn't hear her thoughts for the riot of hammering her heart beat out. In the dim light of the second floor, he looked positively angelic. Her legs almost gave out, and the instinct to run past him and out into the street to fresh air and solitude crept within her, threatening her courageous confession.

Arnold nodded in reply, his mouth too dry to offer verbal encouragement.

"I'm just really…really nervous right now, actually," Helga stammered, looking down at her feet. "I hate this feeling." Her eyes squeezed shut. She sincerely hated feeling vulnerable. It frightened her, it made her angry. She only had herself to rely on her entire life, even Phoebe had let her down plenty of times. All she had was her own strength. Facing the person that took it from her so easily frightened her.

Her eyes opened when she felt Arnold's thumb gently rubbing hers, the simple but strong squeeze of his fingers around hers. Looking up at him, she only saw the simple kindness he had always shown her, effortlessly. Because that's just who he was.

Arnold watched and waited, understanding her nervousness all too well. He felt badly that he might have had this effect on her. Though he was nervous, it was from excited anticipation. An eagerness to see what was around the corner. He only felt uplifted by Helga, and was nervous to know where he would end up next. He offered her what comfort he could, a simple rub of the thumb. She looked up at him, her large blue eyes wide.

"Arnold, I-" she began, but was interrupted by the sudden clink of a glass bottle downstairs. Simultaneously, the two reluctant confessors turned their heads to look over the loft railing.

A sea of strangers moved through the house as quietly as possible, Helga's oracular prediction vindicated with gusto. At the head of the crowd, the familiar faces of PS118, hushing Harold harshly as he struggled by a tower of bottles and cups, teetering precariously.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Helga growled. "We can't even get five minutes alone here. Criminy, it's like the whole world has to know our business!"

"Well," Arnold finally said, his voice cracking. "They did just see the whole show...and literally deliver us to the doorway." He turned back to Helga, taking her other hand and squeezing it with his. Now they were joined with both limbs, a single circuit of heartbeats racing through one of them and answering the echo call in the other. "Just say what you were going to say...quietly." He smiled at her, his eyes drooping contentedly.

Helga's face burned with embarrassment, and the default scowl of anger struggled with the goofy grin of bliss she was fighting against at Arnold's sweet little gestures of tender kindness.

"A-ah...Ah, uh, hey. Hey, uh." She stammered, the thoughts she had woven together to deliver, the practiced speech she had mentally prepared over and over leaving her immediately. "Hey, Arnold. Hey, look, let's...let's go inside." She bashfully looked away from him, her voice low and quiet.

"Whatever you say, Helga." Arnold grinned, turning to the crowd. He blew them a kiss, flourishing with his hand into a dramatic royal wave. "Sorry folks, show's over."

Helga's shoulders hunched over her ears as she sought to escape the scrutiny of everyone below them, and her now free hand fumbled with the door knob for a few frustrating seconds, before the door was swung open and the two of them disappeared inside.

_Privacy at last,_ she sighed inwardly, the tension in her heartbeat unwinding when she heard Arnold lock the door behind them. She was smart to have chosen one of the only bedrooms with a deadbolt.

_Now we'll get somewhere,_ Arnold excitedly thought, energized by the immediate future, extraordinarily aware of everything about her, her every movement and gesture. He wondered if he had ever seen anyone with such clarity.

"So...so I was going to say," she started, standing on the far side of the room from him. She needed physical separation if she was going to proceed. He just did too many things to her when he touched her, too many nervous things and warm things and tingling things for her to concentrate. "Maybe you should sit down, Arnold," she said with some concern. "This is gonna take a while. I'm not exactly into the whole _brevity_ thing."

Arnold parked his butt on the bed immediately, smiling wide and expectantly at her. "Monologue away, Helga. I'm all ears...and I've been waiting a long, _long_ time for this."

_You and me both,_ she mused. How ridiculous it felt to her, now, that he was not only expectant of her answer, but excited to hear it. _Arnold actually feels something for me,_ she realized with a jolt. Even if it was small, even if it was just raw physical attraction or maybe more than friendly curiosity, or even if it was some kernel of affection, she could not deny that he clearly had a vested interest in what she was about to say. He was _anticipating it._

The shocking revelation that even a tiny part of her girlhood fantasies could be actually true, despite all logic and experience, made her feel light and giddy. Like she was some sort of effervescent bubbly soda, and the flavor of her heart was bounced and buoyed by the impossible lightness of being cared for. She fought off the smile on her face, but a massive wave of self-consciousness made her feel as if she was impossibly obvious in her every thought and expression. Surely, she felt with mortified silence, Arnold could read literally everything she was thinking as clearly as if she had written it down for him. _Hell, he saw all those letters,_ she reasoned. The exposure thrilled her, just as it made her want to flee.

On the razor's edge of courage and cowardice, Helga perched prepared for her confession at last. She rode the lightning line of jagged uncertainty between the status quo of decades, silent unreciprocated longing, and an unforeseen future where she and Arnold had no guarantees. _Can I really do this, after all? _Doubt crowded her mind, threatening to overwhelm her courage with its clumsy, dough-like push and spread through her psyche.

Oddly, it was remembering the day she met him as she gathered her thoughts for delivery that gave her the courage to begin. The font opened up, and the deluge poured forth. Opening her mouth, Helga locked eyes with Arnold, and told him everything.

* * *

"I have been in love with you from the literal moment I laid eyes on you. We were three. You probably don't remember, I mean how could you? I won't forget it, though, ever.

"I am sorry to say that my family life has always been shit, and unfortunately even when I was a goddamn toddler that was the case. I had walked myself, in the mud and the rain, hungry and scared and sad, to my first day at daycare. I can't even remember why I was alone anymore; I just was, and when I got there I was soaked to my little unformed bones and had mud head to toe. I'd never known such misery, such blatant disregard for my very _existence. _No three year old child should have to wonder _why_ they _exist._

_"Then an umbrella is over my head. _Remember, I am three, and the whole world as I knew it was Bob, father of the year, and Miriam, a bottomless flask. The possibility of genuine human kindness literally didn't exist to me. And yet, an umbrella is just sitting pretty right over my stupid little head, like it was just obvious that it should be there.

"And a cute little boy with just the sweetest smile in the world is holding it over my head. He looks at me almost curiously, like, '_Why on Earth are you alone and where is your umbrella,' _because he just doesn't have any concept of what it is like to be this miserable. And even then, there's no pity in his little green eyes, just kindness. And then, haha, pay attention, Arnold, because, this is the kicker, he just opens up his dumb little football head mouth and practically murders my little three year old heart.

"He says, 'I like your bow, it's pink like your pants,' and isn't that just the balm of Gilead? What on this bizarre planet we call home can a _compliment_ be? To be _noticed_, to be _validated_ and recognized as a person with needs and feelings? I tell ya, kiddo, I was screwed royally from moment one.

"So I fall in love. Like, _love _love. I certainly know damn well that's what it was because it was ten thousand times stronger than any kind of family fondness I had ever felt. I loved that stupid little boy more than ice cream and fire trucks. Do you have _any _idea how ill prepared a three year old is for falling in love? Like, really, though? Can I just take a minute to elaborate here, and mention that it's likely some kind of cruel cosmic _joke _to make children that young capable of that kind of depth? A little mind and heart so inexperienced gets swallowed up by emotions that big.

"So that's what happened. Helga became her Love. I'm sure you remember the rest, how I showed my affections, and how I masked my overwhelming, frankly frightening feelings from everybody with needless cruelty. Well I will be straight with you finally: I never ever meant any of the cruel or mean or insulting things I said about you, not _once._ Every word I said, I meant the opposite. I wish I could take all seven years of manic obsessive overcompensation back, because you never once deserved any of the abuse I heaped on you.

"But even as I look at your stupid sweet face while I tell you all this I can see that I was forgiven for all that a long time ago. And that's the sweetest pain of all, to _know _that you put water under that bridge forever ago, and I am still ruined with guilt for every single torment I inflicted.

"How I _wish _I could undo it all. But I can't. At least now you know.

"I built shrines to you, you know. I did. In my closets, until you left. I made them out of whatever objects pulsed with significance in my overwhelmed heart that week; once, I collected your used gum from under your seats and desks at school and sculpted it into a pretty convincing likeness. Yeah, it was exactly as gross as you are imagining it, and yeah, I feel super weird and awkward telling you this now. I must have confessed to literally worshipping you as a God so many times in those letters. I had rituals designed to attract your favor, get your attention, distract you from other girls, charms I could perform to get you to smile at me or say something nice. I had a verifiable _culture_ built up to give the massive feelings I had structure and make being as powerfully in love I was at the age I was possible to live through. I'm going to regret those extra shots for telling you that. But my therapist never discouraged me from doing it, she said it was a healthy expression of my feelings or something. Still pretty weird to tell you.

"I was Cecile. I am still blown away that you didn't notice. How many blondes did you know with unibrows? I guess I covered it pretty good, but honestly, Shortman, when it comes to noticing me you always took your time. I'm sorry I deceived you, my beloved, and took away the reunion with your pen pal. I was selfish, and I don't regret it. I got to show you a side of me _nobody _had ever seen, and it felt _amazing. _Almost as incredible as _this_ feels, actually.

"This is insane to me, by the way. I have to keep talking or I will realize what I am saying and seize up and die. You understand, the only thing keeping me talking is momentum, that's why I won't let you speak until I have said it all. So thanks for shutting up.

"It almost killed me when you left. Like, literally. I don't like remembering those first couple of years. I made some stupid mistakes. I...hurt myself once. I immediately regretted it, and thank _God _I had no idea what I was doing and didn't seriously hurt myself. The school noticed though, so did Phoebe. Then everybody knew, _Helga's a cutter, _and just because I tried it _once_ that bullshit stuck with me until college. That heavily contributed to what I will refer to here as The Meltdown.

"Miriam reacted pretty bad to my little indiscretion. Olga moved back home, actually, in a misguided attempt to lead me down a better path or some bullshit, but that only made things _worse. _See, as long as Bob just had me around he had enough of a level of plausible deniability to ignore Miriam's _problem. _I just didn't _care_ how far down into her 'smoothies' she fell, and luckily Miriam had just enough sense to never go past the point of no return. But Olga comes in, meaning well, and has all these trumpeted up concerns about my mental health and then _she _sees the problem with Miriam and gets Bob finally involved.

"I wish you had been here. Things were hard. Even when I was really struggling as a kid, I could talk to you and feel better and usually even end up somehow closer to my family. Not this time. You were living your boyhood dream with your mom and dad. And I was trapped in my pre-teenage nightmare with mine.

"I actually sided with Bob in the inevitable divorce, believe it or not. One night, after he'd found Miriam passed out in the fridge, nearly hypothermic, he comes into my room and sits on my bed and we stare at each other in awkward silence for about twenty minutes before he finally says, 'Helga, I'm sorry I checked out.' I was _blown away. _Coulda knocked me over with a feather. Big Bob Pataki, apologizing to me.

"Don't get me wrong, I didn't forgive him. Think one apology makes up for literally ignoring me for twelve years? No, Helga G. Pataki doesn't play that. I told him, 'sorry Bob, but you're about one daughter too late for that apology,' and he just stares at me with this angry, _I know you are right but fuck you for being so right anyway_ look. Looking back, I can see a lot of him in me. That's the face I make when Phoebe proves me wrong and we don't talk for two weeks. And I kind of understand him better now. Big Bob just couldn't deal with being a family man. Not really. It wasn't something that came naturally to him. Olga's _magnificence_ was the only thing that brought him into the whole situation with interest. That's why she was the favorite. That's why he listened to her.

"So when Olga convinces them to get counseling, after months and months of dramatic, operatic crying and heaving breasts and runny mascara, they go to _one _meeting and Bob comes home and announces they are getting divorced.

"Oh man, it was like the air got sucked out of my lungs. Sure, I hated Bob's guts and thought he was a bastard, but he was still my _dad _and a presence I was used to. Miriam barely said a word, she just upped the smoothie intake and slept a lot more. Honestly, I was so disgusted with her, and Bob had at least offered an apology to me, so when they asked me who I wanted to stay with I picked Bob. Olga and Miriam moved out a couple weeks after that. Christmas that year was kind of nice, actually. Bob and I watched _A Christmas Story _like six times and he called me 'Helga' all day. Miriam called and cried, then Olga called and cried, and then I read your Christmas letter and cried. It was a big day for Kleenex. Market shares went through the roof.

"So that's what happened to Helga. I moved in with Brainy when I was seventeen, not too long after your last letter. I went in to the living room and told Bob I was moving out. He only had questions about how I would pay for it all. Brainy's got a job and I have Bob's little trust fund. We've been roommates ever since. He's great to live with, and my bandmate, so it's a good setup. I can't complain. I thought my life would proceed without you in it ever again, broken into smaller pieces and not what it was when we were kids, but something I could still see myself sticking out to see how things turned out. I thought about you daily, and felt weird.

"I am mad at you, Arnold, by the way. Super pissed off. You owe me a fucking childhood. I wanted to watch you grow into a man. I wanted to see your first day at high school. I wanted to see you get tall. I wanted to hear your voice change. I wanted to be there when you became all grown up. I wanted to take you to prom, and go on your first date with you, and, and sneak into your room on valentine's day to surprise you with...well, nevermind. All of that is over. I am going to always be bitter that I never got to experience any of it.

"That anger carried me through the worst times, though. It's just as precious to me as my most tender feelings of affection. I was _so mad _at you for leaving, and just as bad, I was furious with myself for feeling that. I think that's the only thing that kept the fires stoked through all these years of cold and distance. Because I lost a piece of myself when you left, and I still haven't put it back in its place. I wont dare, not yet, because I feel like I am always inches away from losing you all over again. I can't survive that twice. I won't. Whether I like it or not, there is no Helga without Arnold.

"So, so I guess the point of all this, the whole reason I pulled the stunt with our old friends on stage, the paper cranes thing, the letters, the songs I wrote, all of it...is to keep you, Arnold. I have accepted it inside myself, and I am placing _everything_ on this risky bet, this slim chance. I chase it like a ghost hunter.

"I love you, Arnold. I can't live without you. Not in the way I know I was meant to.

"Will you stay with me tonight?"

* * *

Through the roller coaster journey of Helga's speech, Arnold listened with absolute focus. He didn't want to miss a single detail of her confession. Every minute speck of her was significant to him in this moment, and he bent every cell in his body towards her to listen.

From the touching and surprising story of their toddler years, to the apology for a near decade of abuse, to the shocking and awkward revelation that she had broken down after his departure, Arnold attentively processed the pieces of the person he felt such strong affection towards. Here was the real Helga. She was finally out in front of him, unloading years of secrets, a jazz confessional free of practiced stiffness and alive with all the character and verve within her. He couldn't recall ever talking to her for this long one on one. All of their childhood conversations had been short and nasty, or even shorter when she was nice.

It was a lot to take in, to say the least. He wasn't sure how he felt about the _shrines_, or her dark experiments in self destruction. It made him nervous, it showed him just how intense and limitless her passions ran.

And then she destroys his thoughts, sends them scattering to the winds, and drives all logic and reason from his heart like a Valkyrie riding vanguard into battle. With her question, posed so sincerely, on the heels of her long awaited confession of truest love, Arnold found himself suddenly brought to the stunning realization that the Helga he loved and that was in front of him was not the little girl that bullied him anymore.

The Helga that walked towards him with purpose now, her eyes alive and bright and glittering, was a _woman_.

* * *

Helga snarled when she heard the obvious bump against their door. She was millimeters away from Arnold, her hand almost touching his face, their lips perilously close, and then the goddamn peanut gallery decides to drop in. She whipped her head around to hatefully glare at the closed door, wishing she could strike dead all the clumsy interlopers that had ruined the perfect moment she had finally pulled from the impossible jaws of fate.

Arnold rest his hand on her leg. The heat in her face made her dizzy immediately. She looked down at him, standing over his beautiful face in such terrific intimate proximity that she almost forgot for just a moment that they had unwanted observers listening on the other side of the door.

"Ignore them," Arnold huskily whispered, and Helga's knees were jelly. She found herself unable to help herself, and without defenses she fell onto Arnold like a comet.

Their mouths connected and Helga gasped in surprise at the living shock of the sensation of Arnold against her. The sound escaped her mouth, which opened wide to accept the intrusion of Arnold's tongue immediately. Her hands grabbed fistfuls of his hair on either side of his head, and she pressed herself onto him as firmly as possible. If she had the means, she would have pressed her atoms into his, mingling their quantum electron shells and becoming indistinguishable as individuals. The raw, hot taste of his mouth in hers made her involuntarily let out little sounds of surprise and pleasure, and Arnold paid her back in kind with his own shaking groans.

Arnold couldn't think, he had no higher level brain function. All that he was capable of experiencing was the weight of Helga's body on his, practically poured against him into his lap and against his chest. He felt his hands splayed against her back, fingers digging into her well defined back muscles and sliding underneath the back straps of her bra. When he grabbed her hips, Helga moaned and pushed her pelvis forward, and Arnold growled automatically.

The silence of the room was punctuated by gasps and squeals, and the small sounds of lips and tongues brushing against each other. Yet in each of their lives, never had the two experienced anything so loud as the riot of passion they unleashed in unison. Their breathing was the gale of a hurricane; their moans the roar of thunder; when Helga whimpered his name because his lips found her earlobes every syllable was the catastrophic resonance of a stellar explosion.

Helga pushed her face off his, the strength in her barely enough to create a few scant inches of separation from him. Arnold's face buried itself into the plunging neckline of her shirt in response automatically, and she held onto his head for purchase on reality. She couldn't imagine anything this immensely pleasurable. Ecstasy wasn't a strong enough word for it. In some dimly lit lightpost of awareness where reason still existed, not yet overcome by the tsunami of stupefying pleasure of kissing Arnold, she knew that this was going to escalate extremely quickly, and extremely suddenly their lack of total privacy would be an unacceptable problem.

When Arnold's hand slid around to the front of her shirt, pressing against the slope of her chest, her eyes snapped open as that single thought of exposure overwhelmed her.

Arnold felt Hands on his shoulders when he boldly touched her chest, and looked up from his work of his mouth on her neck. He was panting, barely able to keep his breathing under control for the electric adrenaline lancing through his veins.

"S-something wrong?" He whispered, his throat too dry from excitement to manage anything louder.

Helga moaned when his hand squeezed her flesh, and she almost stopped caring that everyone they knew was listening to them. She bit her lip, rolling her head back and squeezing her eyes shut to focus her thoughts. _Please don't ever stop touching me, Arnold_, she prayed even as she was about to make him do just that.

She let him keep his hands busy for a time, however, wondering how it was he seemed to be so experienced and talented with his hands on a woman's body.

"We can't do this here," she finally gasped, arching her back and curling a leg around his waist. She very much wanted to keep going, she had nothing but an all-consuming desire for him burning her up from the inside. The firestorm of a lifetime of _need_ felt like every cell of her was alight and glowing. She felt her body rocking against his, turning her hips flush against his abdomen automatically. "We-_ah!_-" Helga gasped when Arnold's hand slipped under her bra and touched her sensitive flesh for the first time. She instantly burned that memory into her brain, the first time that Arnold's hands had touched a place on her that nobody else had ever seen.

Arnold listened, but found it hard to comply. His fingers couldn't bring themselves away from her. Every part of him wanted to touch her. He had never felt anything so consumptive and obsessive. He needed to know every part of her. He would forsake anything for the chance, even his own privacy and pride.

But she was the final arbiter of when and where he would finally get to experience her love in it's most physical expression.

"_Where_?" was all Arnold was able to force out, his hand reluctantly leaving her shirt and just gripping her hips. Helga looked disappointed when he stopped.

"Your room. We can't at my place. Brainy," she started, but stopped herself. It felt profane to say another name than his now. She bit her lip in embarrassment.

Arnold nodded, and gently pushed her back off of him by the pelvis. Helga steadied herself and climbed free, standing awkwardly, trembling and alert just six inches from him. It felt like she was as far away from him as when he was in San Lorenzo.

His hand reached out and took hers, and they trembled in excitement and anticipation together for a moment, just looking at each other with silent consensus of the heart. Standing, Arnold took a deep breath through his nose, letting it out from his mouth in a single pressure-releasing rush. A hand pushed his hair out of his face, and back.

"We'll run out. I'll lead. Don't look at anyone but me. Look at me." Arnold found that he meant what he was telling her a lot more than mere instructions for the mad dash to freedom from the house. He was talking about forever. "Just look at me," he reiterated, meaning it with everything in him.

Helga nodded. She hadn't ever done anything else. It was all she knew to do.

Arnold and Helga rushed out the door, pulling it open and dashing out in the crowd of people pressed into the little second floor hallway to listen to their encounter. Past faces familiar and strange, Arnold and Helga escaped the press of bodies and ran out the front door, out into the night together, and towards their shared destiny. Two pairs of footprints ran the same narrow path, mingled and sharing a trajectory towards the same moment in time when two souls would finally join into a greater whole.

* * *

Long ago, Helga had come into Arnold's room for the first time to steal something of his to add to her shrine. She waited until Arnold and his grandfather left their boarding house to go to a baseball game, so that she would have plenty of time to spend surrounded by Arnold's world. She intended to bask in the pieces of his life and learn everything she could.

She still remembered the strange fear and excitement of breaking into his skylight roof, and lowering her wiry, skinny frame into the boy's extremely modern and, she thought, incredibly cool room. She delighted at every detail. She submerged herself in his sheets and looked at all his books and toys, trying to memorize each one. Every trinket and curiosity an item of interest. Every corner a boundary of his existence, and thus the shape of her own life.

She was seven the first time she stood in Arnold's room. She had no way of knowing as she walked the room from wall to wall, counting the paces and memorizing the way the moon looked from his bed that it would be the place that Arnold would show her what his soul looked like some stupid Summer day thirteen years later. She couldn't have imagined the nearly religious beauty of connecting to him, sharing breath and sweat and spit like one body. She had no idea that she was standing in the same room that her beloved would lay with her, and where they would learn what their bodies were made for together.

* * *

"What's this one?" Helga poked a dark line on Arnold's naked abdomen about two inches above his pelvic bone. She was laying against him, their bare bodies clinging skin-to-skin. Her legs wrapped themselves around his, woven like two braids, and she leaned on one arm slightly above her beloved to look down at his beautiful body.

After what seemed like a lifetime, but really was only a couple of hours, the two of them had finally been too physically exhausted to continue their passionate work. Now they lay together in Arnold's bed, Helga's hair down and poured out behind her like a golden wave. Arnold rest his head on a hand behind it, his shoulders propped up by two pillows folded in half. The room was hot, and smelled like bodies.

"That's...a knife." Arnold sounded hesitant to talk about the scar she was asking him about. For the past ten minutes she had been exploring the nooks and crannies of his body she had not yet poured her passionate attention on, eager to learn every secret.

Her eyes widened and her strong eyebrows twisted in hesitant disbelief. "A knife? What the hell?"

"Yeah. I don't like remembering it. It's still a little stiff, so don't poke too hard." Arnold really wished Helga would move on.

"Well don't hold back on me now, Shortman. Recall that I am naked and laying on you. Let's hear the knife story."

"I got stabbed by a _Zetas_ human trafficker at the Texas and Mexico border in Nuevo Laredo when I was sixteen." The phantom pang of the knife wound in his gut made him feel slightly sick. It was not a good memory.

"Wait a minute. Let me repeat back to you what you just told me because I'm not sure your sweet little head understands what you just said. _You got knifed by a Zetas coyote? _How in the _fuck_ did that happen?"

Arnold sighed. She really wasn't going to let it go. She had been grilling him on every scrape and blemish. The cherry-colored clot of the long snakelike scar on his thigh and inner pelvis from the fall with Lila was the last thing left on him she hadn't asked about. He saw the conversations coming on the heels of this story, so he decided to make it good. Hopefully enough to distract her.

"Mom and Dad got wind of some traffickers that were moving some Native tribespeople across the border to work for cartel backed farmers in California. We flew into Neuvo Laredo on the trail, basically just trying to save as many of them as we could. Mom and Dad had some support from the Mexican feds, but, only minimally. The _Zetas_ had bribed their way pretty deep into the command structure, so all we had was a couple of fresh agents and a single detective that had been in charge of the case for the area.

"Well one night the trail leads us to this house where we were told a family of the Natives were being held before they were loaded into trucks and processed into their network, and once that happened they would basically be beyond anyone's reach. They would get filtered out into an extremely dense and complicated network of traffickers and end up all over the state of California. We basically had that night to get them out.

"I was scared out of my mind, but I wouldn't let Miles or Stella leave me behind. See, I knew one of the girls that was taken. Rosa. She was fourteen. Native Argentinian. She was taken from her family when she was thirteen, so she'd basically lived a full year in captivity, moving from country to country. I don't even want to think about what her experience was like. Pretty much the worst thing you could imagine.

So I'm sixteen and in a cheap bullet proof vest not sized for me, and in the van waiting. Mom and Dad had gone in with the agents. There was basically nobody in the house there to guard the captives, just two guys with sidearms. They kept them in place with fear, really.

"So I am waiting and I have knots in my stomach 'cause I don't know, anything could happen in there. I could lose them again. But then they walk out, each holding the arm of these _cartel_ _Zetas_, and the agents are coming out with the Natives on by one. I'm pretty much overjoyed to see them okay. Then I see Rosa come out, and she looks really scared and thin, so I rush out of the van.

"I didn't see the third _Zetas_, but he was around the back of the van in the blind spot. He was basically waiting for his chance, and as soon as I jumped out of the van he's on me. We struggle and I hear mom shout my name and then I heard dad yell 'knife!' and then I feel something hit my gut.

"I read somewhere that getting stabbed doesn't hurt like you think it should. That's a fucking _lie_. It's…" Arnold touched his scar, remembering the feeling with too much clarity.

"It fucking hurts. It _hurts_, Helga. I am pretty much down on my back curled over the hole in my belly instantly. I don't remember what else happened. They told me that he turned on them, and that I grabbed his foot and he fell and they got him right away. I don't remember that, but I do remember sitting in a hospital bed for two weeks in Austin recovering.

"Rosa visited me once, before Miles and Stella flew her back home to her village in the Andes. She thanked me for saving her, and kissed my hand. I felt pretty phony, because I didn't do a _damn_ thing except get knifed immediately and accidentally trip the guy. Mom insists I saved her, maybe saved them all, because that guy with the knife could have hit most or all of them before they were able to get him down if I hadn't tripped him. I think she's just saying that to make me feel less stupid.

"And yeah, it's still kind of painful. It went deep. It missed all my vital organs but it nicked my lower intestine and they had to sew me up with a robot arm and put me on vicodin for a month. That was, uh, kind of a fun month." Arnold grinned up at Helga, who was watching him tell his story with a predatory readiness. The look sent goosebumps up his arms and down his neck and back.

"You saved her," she whispered reverently. "You did."

Arnold shook his head with a smile. "I just got lucky. Mom and Dad saved her."

"No, no, I'm afraid not. Arnold the hero saved her. And got this terrible little mark for his bravery," she smiled, touching the rim of the tough scar with her fingers. "I think you deserve a reward." There was trouble and mischief in her eyes when she looked back up at him, teeth showing in her smile.

That look interested Arnold. He grinned automatically. "Oh yeah? What do you have in mind? A medal? maybe a ticker-tape parade?"

"Actually," she said, moving her body down with a grin. She answered him with her mouth. Arnold closed his eyes and fell into helplessness when he felt her smile from the inside.

She stopped suddenly, leaving Arnold, and he grumbled with frustration. "Why'd you stop?"

She was sitting on his knees, looking down at his body with concern and surprise. Her hands rested on either side of his hips. "What is _that_ one?" Genuine dismay and worry etched itself in her features. She was looking at the long scar, still ruby red and raised as it trailed through his legs and across his inner thigh. "I can't do sexy things on you while I am face to face with _that_. What is that? What happened? It looks fresher than the other ones. What is that?" She looked up at him, and Arnold's heart pounded to see her so concerned, and nervous from the stress of having to answer her. "Arnold, what is that?"

He recalled the terror of the fall. Hitting the rocks with his groin first. Feeling the bone in his leg with his fingertips, sticking out of his thigh. The cold panic, wondering _did it go through my artery?_ Passing out. Waking up cold and his leg tight and hot and throbbing with agony in a cast. Hearing of Lila's heroics. The overwhelming guilt. Two months of recovery and physical therapy to walk right. Something Lila would never get to do.

"I fell." He was far more terse than when he initially spoke of his knife scar. "Helga, I really don't want to talk about that one tonight."

Helga shook her head, putting her hands on his chest. "Sorry, bucko, that thing looks _fresh_. It's _huge_. What on Earth did that? were you gored by a boar or something?"

"No. I told you, I fell." He felt himself closing off, a reflex to protect the experience. A wave of guilt started to swell up under him, rising to his teeth and floating in his eyeballs, making him feel ill. He was naked in bed with Helga, after hours of passionate lovemaking, when the girl who he owed his life to was paralyzed in a wheelchair with her heart broken by him less than half a day ago. _What kind of person am I to do this to two people?_ He suddenly wanted clothes on, so he curled his legs up to his chest under Helga and rolled off the bed to start putting on clothes.

Helga watched him, terrified of what was happening. She felt suddenly very cold, and was very aware of her nudity. She held the blankets on his bed to her chest, covering herself for protection.

_Why wont he tell me? What could upset him this much?_ Helga was afraid to ask him anything else. He was already putting his jeans back on, facing away from her. _I've fucked this up_, she thought with despair. _He's going to kick me out. This was a mistake._

Suddenly, her cell phone started buzzing from a text. The sound echoed in her mind, bringing her back to a similar moment earlier in the night. When Phoebe's phone had been buzzing in a purse. With Lila on the other line. _Lila_.

Lila had mentioned circumstances she didn't know. Arnold was hiding something from her, was putting distance between them after they had finally shared their bodies and souls together. Lila said she was in _love_ with him. Arnold had known how to touch Helga so _expertly._ A thousand imagined scenarios instantly unfolded in her mind. Suspicion towered within her with juggernaut force.

"When are you going to talk to me about Lila," she started sourly. "You already got me in bed, what's left?" She surprised herself with the force of her bitterness. She hadn't meant to say that. It came out of her mouth automatically.

Arnold turned around abruptly. He looked surprised, but also a little angry. "What are you talking about? And I didn't _get you in bed_, Helga, we shared something together. We shared _each other._ Don't cheapen this with your jealousy." Arnold shut up immediately, instantly realizing he'd said the wrong thing.

"_Jealousy_? What do I have to be _jealous_ of, exactly, Shortman? Why don't you enlighten me? I didn't know there was anything to be _jealous_ of until you just told me. I just guessed it was her because _why wouldn't it be_? She always found ways to ruin things for me when it came to you before. So tell me, do tell me, oh sweet, sweet Football head. _What does that scar have to do with Lila and why should I be jealous?"_

The level of threat in her voice was terrifying to him. He was suddenly very aware of her physical presence, the well defined muscles of her arms and shoulders. The way her tendons moved and shifted in her forearms as she clenched her fists. He desperately wanted to avoid rousing her anger to the point that she became physical with him.

"Alright, alright, I'll...I'll tell you, but you need to _calm down._" Arnold sat on his desk shirtless, holding up a hand. "And...you should get dressed."

Helga narrowed her eyes at him, slowly standing from his bed and letting the sheets fall off her body. She stood in front of him, completely nude, her feet shoulder width apart and arms held at her sides powerfully. She defied his suggestion, no longer feeling anything except an aggressive level of anticipation. "Go ahead, Arnold. I am totally calm. Tell me about Lila." Her tone was flat.

Arnold swallowed and rubbed his eyes with his hands. "I fell in San Lorenzo because I was climbing down a waterfall face without a partner. My climbing equipment was rusted out and failed. It was stupid. I broke my femur right beneath the ball joint. Compound fracture. I am really lucky the bone missed my arteries, but I still lost enough blood that I passed out. Lila was there, in San Lorenzo," he paused, watching Helga's black eyebrows raise dangerously. Her fists clenched so hard they were white.

"Lila came after me when one of the guides saw me down the escarpment, getting hammered by the waterfall. If I fell the rest of the way I would have been a goner. Stella and Miles were out on research, so she was the only one with climbing experience in the village that could help.

"She made it down to me and put my leg in a splint. I was unconscious. She somehow made it all the way back up with me on her back, and got me over the rim before _she_ fell, too."

Helga's mouth was an angry thin line, her jaw clenching and moving in anger. Arnold wasn't sure why she was so mad Lila had saved him, but he continued telling her the story.

"Stella and Miles had to save her. I woke up in a hospital in Rio with my leg in a splint. Several surgeries later I could walk with a cane. Physical therapy took away my limp. Lila wasn't so lucky, she," he stopped. Helga was crying. She was staring him down, fury on her features, but tears streaming down her face. Arnold felt sick, but pressed on.

"Lila was paralyzed from the waist down, with partial mobility in her feet and sensation up to half the calf on her right leg. She didn't break her back, but suffered permanent nerve damage. She's been at the farm in a wheelchair since. She saved my life, Helga. I owe her my life. I owe her a lot more than that."

Helga's voice was high with emotion when she spoke, a bitter smile creasing her face. "Like your body? Maybe your heart, something like that? _The_ farmhouse? I'm not stupid, Arnold. The way you touched me," she forced a dark chuckle, tension and emotion knotted in her throat, "there's just no way you've never put hands on a girl before. I can imagine it all too clearly. She saved your life, so you give her yours? Sound about right?"

Arnold narrowed his eyes, shaking his head hard. "No, it's not like that, Helga. Listen,"

"No, I'm done listening to you tonight. I should have known this was too good to be true. After ten years apart there's no way we could just pick up where we left off and be together. I was stupid. Lila called Phoebe at the party. _I knew about Lila_. Now I know why she was in such a panic, and why she _begged_ me not to seduce you tonight." Helga felt all the fury and betrayal she felt flying out of her mouth, each a little knife designed to cut Arnold as deep as she could. "What, are you two dating? Am I your little side piece, back at the old stomping grounds? This some kind of twisted game for you, Shortman?"

"What! Helga calm down, you don't know the whole story! I am _not_ two timing you or Lila or anyone."

"Oh really, do please explain that one to me, Arnold. Because Lila made it seem like she was pretty scared of me _taking_ you from her. You can't _take_ what isn't _possessed_ by someone else."

"No, Helga. Lila and I are _not_ together."

"So explain yourself!" Helga shrieked.

Arnold hesitated, his green eyes searching Helga's for understanding. Her blue eyes were red with tears, squinting with hurt and fury.

"I was engaged to Lila." He finally said, his guts cold and his limbs heavy.

Helga was a blur, her blonde hair flashing behind her as she closed the distance between them in an instant. Arnold felt something hard and heavy hit the side of his head, and stars exploded in his vision and his world flipped sideways.

He shook the ringing from his ears and the blurriness of his vision, seeing Helga hastily throwing her clothes onto her body, her hands shaking violently. His head pounded, immediately swelling on his cheek and temple where she hit him. The familiar fire spreading in his cheek worried him that she had cracked his cheekbone with her punch.

"Helga, wait-" he started, struggling to stand up.

"Save your breath, Arnold. Don't ever talk to me again." She turned to look him in the eyes after she jerkily pulled her shirt down over her head. "I never want to see you. Get out of my town. Get out of my life." Her voice was quiet, shaking, and tight. Arnold felt a tear push itself out of his eye and roll down his cheek.

"Helga, please." All he could do was beg her.

"Goodbye, Arnold." Helga left his room, avoiding looking at him as she pushed past him, whispering her final words to him as she slipped out the door.

Arnold stared at the empty doorway, his face throbbing. Helga was gone. With her left the world, and everything in it.

* * *

A/N Summary: Arnold and Helga share an intimate moment and confess their feelings for each other. Helga reveals her teenage self-harm, her parents' divorce, and how life was like for her when Arnold left. They share a kiss which becomes very physical and passionate, and they go to Arnold's room to consummate their feelings. Afterwards, Helga listens to Arnold tell a story about saving a girl in Nuevo Laredo and getting stabbed for his trouble, and then Helga notices the scar from his fall. She interrogates Arnold, who finally confesses the truth about being saved by, and getting engaged to Lila. Helga lays him out with a haymaker, and furiously commands him to never speak to her again. Thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8 - A Song for the Sad Ones

A/N: You probably hate me. Just when they get back together I rip them apart. Keep with me, this is an AxH story, I promise. For now, we see the aftermath of the party from some new perspectives. I am experimenting with my POV shifts throughout the story. I felt stymied by sticking to a single person's POV per chapter, so we might see some similar departures from that style like from chapter seven. I haven't decided if this POV potpourri will be a recurring thing, so please leave comments about this format if you have an opinion one way or the other.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter Eight: A Song for the Sad Ones

"If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can." - William Faulkner

* * *

Brainy stood over the wrecks of Helga's guitar and amp on stage, lost for words. Sweat slicked his shirt to his chest and under his arms, wet from the cathartic release of the show. For Helga, it had been a moment of catastrophic release. For Brainy, it was more of a bittersweet outpour. He ran his eyes over the ruined splinters of Helga's guitar, following the split and curling strings in their death-throes dance up over the shattered pink body. He felt numb. Not sad, not angry, just absent. Departed from the scene of jubilant carnage he had just helped create.

The party had moved into the house after Helga and Arnold minutes ago. Brainy had watched them get carried away by the crowd, surfed to their destiny together by a sea of uplifting hands and encouraging shouts. All his friends from PS118 went in the house after them taking the lead, eager to listen in or catch a glimpse of the inevitable reunion. Only Phoebe had lingered to watch Brainy bend down and start wordlessly picking up the pieces of Helga's guitar, watching him from the roof of the frat house inscrutably. He barely paid her any mind, focusing instead on delicately lining up the shards and pieces of his short time with Helga in her guitar case, attempting to get one last look at the girl he had got to be with whole.

Loading the van alone helped him with his thoughts. Brian went through the motions of lifting amps, wrapping electrical cords, and disassembling their drum kit. All of it went back into his old beat up Volkswagen, stacked to the ceiling absent of any of the purpose and anticipation the last time he looked at the full trunk. There wasn't a show to go play, there wasn't anything to rehearse. These pieces of their lives would go back to their places in storage or underneath the Christmas trees in closets. Tucked away. Out of sight.

He sat on the roof of his van and rolled himself a cigarette. Helga and Arnold would be in the thick of it now, he knew. He could tell by the sudden rush of cheering on the other side of the house, somewhere in the front yard, that the two of them were leaving. Ashing the cigarette, he exhaled a large sigh of smoke and wondered if he would come home to the two of them.

An ugly thought, to say the least.

It wasn't that he was not happy for Helga. Her dream was finally unfolding, and the boy she'd been pining after for her whole life would at last reciprocate her truest feelings. As her close friend, he was happy for her. He was sure that the life she wanted with Arnold would come for her soon.

It was just the fact that his role in her life would soon be obsoleted, and there would quickly be no room for him as Helga's roommate. Realistically, he gave it a month before Helga wanted to move in with Arnold instead, assuming that the football headed boy ended up staying in Hillwood. And he'd be a special kind of stupid to make the kind of mistake necessary to leave again.

Brian was lighting a second cigarette when he heard small footfalls crunch the gravel near his van. He looked down, seeing Phoebe looking up at him from over her small horn rimmed glasses.

"Hi Brian. I came to talk."

Brainy nodded at her, sliding from the roof of his van and dusting his trousers off. He leaned against the hood, watching the large crowd of people dispersing in the front lawn, spilling out into the streets. He spotted several of his old friends among them. They all looked very happy.

"I would have to be especially unobservant to be unaware of your feelings. Tonight must have been especially difficult for you."

"Uh, yeah." He felt like that was a gross understatement. But Phoebe always had a hand for subtlety.

"For what it is worth, I think you did the right thing by Helga. It takes a lot of courage to let someone you care for so deeply go. I know you've been Helga's silent partner in her role in the party tonight, but your cooperation has been instrumental for us, too. Gerald and myself. I wanted to extend my sincerest thanks to you for everything."

Brian had been dreading a conversation of this type since the half-baked conspiracy began. He most certainly didn't want to engage with Hillwood's most loquacious busybody in a conversation about his complex feelings for Helga. He chose not to respond, stubbing his cigarette out onto the thick black rubber of his van's front tire.

"And...I wanted to come ask you for help in the next part." Phoebe sounded reluctant to ask him this terrible thing. Brian just looked at her with his hazel eyes, mouth slightly open. Was she really asking him for more?

"You see...sometime tonight, there is an extremely high probability that Arnold will tell Helga that he is engaged to be married to Lila Sawyer sometime around Christmas."

Brainy's jaw dropped fully open. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. Arnold was engaged to Lila. And he just left the frat house with Helga. Brian turned his head, gazing off in the direction that they had left. What was happening to Helga right now? Was she alright? Was Arnold doing something unspeakable, and sullying her while he was promised to someone else?

Brian looked back at Phoebe, his jaw clenched.

"Yes, I can see you understand the difficulty of the situation we find ourselves in. However, you should know, we planned all of this knowing that Arnold was promised to Lila. In fact, their engagement is the precise reason we planned any of it. I'd like to explain everything to you fully. Now, actually."

Brainy could hardly believe his ears. How could Phoebe be doing something so...monstrous to Helga? Wasn't she her best friend since they were three? What else was she hiding, and to what depths would she sink?

Brian nodded firmly at her.

"Great. We'll be meeting Gerald at the diner. We're planning on celebrating a job well done with some coffee and a slice of pie. The two of us will happily explain everything. Just know, we are acting in what we believe to be Arnold _and_ Helga's best interests...and, what's more, we have Lila's blessing."

The hit just kept coming. He didn't know what to expect any more. She could tell him anything and he would probably believe her.

"I think you probably have a lot of questions, and your distrust is understandable. But, if the plan is going to work, we have to execute the rest of the steps with the same level of precision as we did tonight. And your assistance is instrumental. The unique nature of your relationship to Helga is a pivotal resource that we must be unafraid to exploit if we will accomplish what we must."

Brian stepped into his van, starting the engine and letting the seat belt warning chime ding away. Phoebe leaned into the window on her tip toes, looking concerned.

"I'll find a way to make it up to you somehow, Brian, I promise. I just want you to-" Brainy held up his hand and shook his head.

"No," he said, then, "I'll see you at the diner."

Phoebe watched him drive off in the rearview mirror in his van. She grew smaller and more remote in his periphery, until she trotted back into the house, out of sight.

Whatever they were planning, Brian decided, he would play along just until he found a way to dismantle it all. Helga didn't deserve this, and he would protect her from them all.

* * *

"Tsk, honestly, the duvet is positively ruined," Rhonda clucked her tongue and shook her head, regarding the chaos and aftermath of the party in the large central living room of the frat house. Eugene was stooped over, picking up plastic cups with a contented smile on his small face. "A thousand years of gratitude to you, Eugene, your help is deeply appreciated."

Eugene smiled sunnily at her, shaking the large hefty bag full of red plastic solo cups with a cheeky laugh. "Oh, no, picking up trash is my way of having fun, Rhonda. I'm happy to help."

Rhonda bent her hand on her hip, shifting her weight and looking around the room in more detail. She notably didn't move to pick anything up, but rather occupied herself with looking stylishly thoughtful. It was a task she performed admirably.

"I can't believe it finally happened," Eugene said, breaking up the silence. "After all these years, they finally got it out in the open."

Rhonda nearly reminded Eugene that he had a lot of experience with why it's sometimes a good idea to keep things secret, but thought better of it at the last minute. Discretion had never been her strong suit, but sometimes Rhonda managed to keep a level head when there was nothing to be gained from a catty remark.

"Yes, it certainly was dramatic. How _very_ like Helga. I have to say, however, she could have given me a little advance warning about her little _Joe Strummer_ stunt. The sparks could have set my dress ablaze." Rhonda sighed in exasperation. Really, Helga was impossible to reason with half the time and a positive boor the other, but even Rhonda had to admit, the show was suitable for her. Having lived through it, should couldn't imagine any other possible course of events. "Did you see any of the letters that were getting projected? Talk about _embarrassing._ Some real Dashboard Confessional stuff. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if something like that that I wrote got shown to everyone I knew and a hundred other people besides."

Eugene tied the bag off, and set it down by the collecting stack of them at the front door. He stood facing away from Rhonda, and then turned his head slowly, a smile still on his lips when he sadly answered her. "Rhonda, we _both_ know what happened the last time a letter you wrote ended up in the wrong hands."

She shut up immediately. Rhonda chalked it up to still being a little tipsy and forgetting who it was she was talking to. Of course they were the only two people in the world who knew _that_ sad story from start to finish. Guilt worked its way into her heart, and Rhonda responded to guilt with viciousness and cruelty, a protective mechanism she built up over years of parental apathy.

"That's old history, Eugene. Nothing will come of you speaking of it. And we were having such a pleasant conversation, too, just like old times. That's your problem, Eugene, you simply have no sense of tact or decorum."

The small boy didn't answer her, and just kept smiling as he collected trash. His impenetrable smile infuriated Rhonda. How _small_ he looked, hunched over a table and gathering _garbage._ Even if she had a hand in some awful things that happened to Eugene, Rhonda would _never_ admit that she was the one at fault for his misery. The fact that he tried to insinuate the opposite roused her wrathful streak.

"Fine, fine, keep quiet. That's something you should have done in the _first_ place." She walked out the front door, done with playing maid for Gerald. She wanted to see Sid. He always cheered her up, the little slimeball, with his smooth moves and sweet words.

She found him on the porch, where he had been most of the night, finishing off the contents of a bottle of beer and looking rather becoming in his all black attire, even if it _did_ scream that he was trying too hard. Rhonda slipped up next to him, folding the back of her red dress down when she took a seat on the steps.

"Hey, beautiful," Sid grinned at her. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, and his pupils pinpricks. Rhonda liked Sid when he was on blow. He had a daredevil streak in him. What she liked most of all about Sid was that he knew how to keep his mouth shut, however.

"Hey yourself, you little pusher. How _dare_ you rake in such an _exorbitant_ fortune at the expense of Gerald's guests." She paused, smiling, and putting a hand on his shoulder. "It _is_ exorbitant, right, Sid?"

"Bow howdy, and then some. I think I'll buy myself another car with tonight's haul." Sid tilted the beer bottle Rhonda's way, and Rhonda covered her nose and mouth with a dainty hand.

"Ugh, no thank you. You know I don't drink anything domestic. I can smell the blue collar of the guy that poured that bottle."

Sid sneered at her playfully, shaking his head as he pulled from the bottle deeply. "Whatever you say, babe."

"So, Sid, I was thinking," she began, two fingers walking up his hand and arm playfully. "What do you say I take you up on one of those offers you so gallantly made me tonight."

Sid had made several passes at Rhonda tonight, as was typical of him. He had grown into quite the ambitious entrepreneur, and an accomplished ladies man to boot, and even though her reputation would suffer ignominious wounding if word ever got out that she was sleeping with him on the regular, she somehow found herself still drawn to him more often than not. He made her smile, and that at least gave him value. She was eager to get to her place and get started.

Instead he answered her request with a question.

"Do I make you happy like that, Rhonda?" Did set the bottle down, looking out at the street and the stragglers still gathered on the lawn.

Rhonda found his question to be unspeakably vulgar. What business was it of his how she _felt_ when he was given the privilege of being with her at all? She resented Sid's sudden attempted intrusion into the vault of her heart. She tried to redirect, knowing that usually Sid was an easy one to distract. Her hand slid from his shoulder, into his lap.

"I enjoy myself perfectly well, stupid boy. I can see you do, too, so, let's make a hasty retreat to a nice hotel and treat ourselves to a couple of lines and each other's company?"

Sid surprised her when he shouldered her arm away from him, looking seriously at her. His dark eyes were oddly penetrating from above his long, noble Sicilian nose. "No, I mean it, Rhonda. Watching those two get back together again, it made me think. I don't _mind_ just fooling around in secret and letting you mooch off my supply, but didn't they seem _happy?_ Like, way happier than you or I ever feel around each other?"

Rhonda's temper started to rise, but the level-headed queen of PS118 could manage something as simple as severing ties with a boytoy. She'd done it dozens of times before. She regretted having to do it to Sid, mostly because of their long shared history as friends. It would be annoying to her feelings to be separated from a childhood friend.

She slipped her hands into her lap, and sighed out the tense feeling of frustration she already began to germinate. "Sid, I think we're done now. It's just not going to happen; we're not like those two." She turned and surprised herself with the bitterness in her voice. "I don't know if anyone is like those two, not really."

Sid pressed on. "I think it's worth a shot to try. What's the worst that could happen?"

_Plenty, you idiot._ Rhonda had no interest in pursuing anything even remotely resembling a true romance with Sid, or anyone for that matter. It was just too difficult to manage her image when she had to double check the work of another person. It's why she'd cut ties with Nadine eventually, and why Nadine left Hillwood shortly thereafter.

"Did you not hear where I said I think we are done?" Her tone was cold. She didn't look at him.

"Of course she has no interest in you," a familiar nasal voice interrupted them. Rhonda and Sid looked up to see Thaddeus walking around the house towards them. "A nobody like you, some low level _pusher?_ Stay in your lane, Icarus, you have no business flying this close to the sun."

Sid scowled. Rhonda definitely didn't want to deal with Curly on top of having to sever ties with Sid. Things had gotten troublesome very quickly.

"Hello Curly," Sid said slowly. "You know, it's pretty not cool to barge into a conversation that has nothing to do with you. I'll even ignore the 'pusher' remark if you apologize and walk away right now."

"It's _Thaddeus_ to the likes of you, or better yet, _Mr. Gammelthorpe._ I don't apologize to those who are beneath my notice."

Rhonda scooted back from Sid, beginning to get nervous. She'd already heard that Curly had incited a fight with Patty earlier. If he was this aggressive, it might escalate with Sid as well.

What worried her is that Sid wasn't just a charming, smooth-talking dealer, he was extremely well connected. Rhonda had, on several occasions, pretended not to listen when he got a suspicious phone call, whispering quietly, and continued to act ignorant when he suddenly had to leave for days at a time. She didn't know who he was in with, she didn't _want_ to know, but she knew that Thaddeus had to tread carefully.

Sid slowly stood up, squaring his shoulders with Curly and looking serious. It took a lot to rile Sid up, he was typically very cool-headed and very difficult to ruffle. Rhonda desperately wanted to avoid getting Sid escalated towards the point where the evening would go _extremely_ astray.

She stood up and slipped between them, facing Curly. "Thaddeus, I heard that you've been looking for me all night. Why don't we get caught up right now?"

Sid shot her a surprised look. She held her mask, unflinching at the hurt in his eyes. Curly curled a lip in victory. "It's about time. let's ditch the local wildlife and make ourselves comfortable someplace expensive. My treat, of course, princess"

Rhonda felt revulsion bubble in her at his little nickname for her. She normally felt giddy when someone offered to treat her to something expensive, but when Thaddeus did it, the feeling within her was pure disgust. She hid it as best she could with a blank expression. "That sounds good."

Curly nodded a victorious gesture towards Sid, and started off towards his Bentley.

Rhonda turned around as soon as Curly was around the block, grabbing Sid by the shirt and kissing him hard. She shoved her tongue into his mouth, immediately deepening the kiss. Sid responded in turn, but after a passionate moment pulled away quickly. He stared at her, obviously confused. "Whoa, Rhonda, _what the hell?_ Weren't you _just_ dumping me?"

Rhonda looked at his shirt instead of his eyes, and tried to make sense of what she felt inside of herself. She was somehow very worried about legitimately hurting Sid's feelings, despite herself. And something about the thought of Sid in a dangerous situation made her sick inside.

"Look, I...may have been being too hasty. I _do_ think we can talk about what you want to talk about-later. I have to handle Curly, I'm the only one that can."

Sid looked at her from inches away, his hand on her elbow. She was oddly touched by the intimate contact. "I don't get you, Lloyd. I guess I'm not smart enough to follow how you work."

Rhonda smiled fondly, finally making eye contact and stepping away from him. "No, you're not. But I like it that way. I'll call you tonight when I'm done with Thad. It won't take long."

Sid considered something, then suggested, "You should text me the address of where he takes you, and send me an 'I'm okay' message every ten minutes. If 11 minutes passes and I don't have one, I'm coming with three other guys."

Something within her was oddly touched at his concern. She was confident that she could handle Curly without any issue, but decided to humor his chivalrous request. "Yes sir. Anything else for me?"

"Yeah, actually," Sid looked surprised, as if he had forgotten something. "I got this text from a number I don't recognize. Normally I wouldn't tell you about that, but the person said she was Lila and she needed to talk to you, specifically."

"_Lila?_ As in, Lila Sawyer, wonder girl, long since departed from Hillwood?" Rhonda was a little surprised. She hadn't heard _that_ name in a long time.

"Yeah. Here let me read the text...hold on." Sid fished in his pocket for his phone, and Rhonda stood wondering what else on _Earth_ tonight would bring.

"Here it is:

'_Sid, this is Lila Sawyer. I got your number from Peapod Kid, and I got his number from Sheena. I need Rhonda's number. I have to talk to her immediately. It's about Helga and Arnold. She's the only one who can help me with this, nobody else is equipped for the job. Do not tell anyone you got this request, please.'_

"So, yeah. Kinda weird. I didn't tell anyone else."

Rhonda held her chin, looking out into the middle distance while she thought. _Why would Lila need my help with Arnold and Helga? Unless it had to do with why Arnold returned so suddenly…_

"Good job. Continue to not tell anyone. In fact, give me your phone." She held her dainty hand out assertively. Sid dropped his iPhone into her hand without hesitation. She loved that he trusted her like that.

Rhonda copied the number down, and then deleted the number from Sid's phone and blocked the number from contacting him. She handed the phone back to him with a sweet smile. "Perfect. You're a dream, Sid. Thank you. I'll send you those updates and the addresses. Then when I'm done we'll get together and have that talk."

Sid grinned at her, pocketing his phone. "I'll have those lines ready for you, and the hotel room." Rhonda curled a feline grin.

"Perfect," she said, and meant it.

* * *

Phoebe sat with Gerald and Brainy in the diner booth, enjoying the warming feel of the stale, too-hot coffee their waitress had poured her. She normally opted for tea, but tonight called for a strong wake-up dose of Joe.

Gerald was tucking into a big plate of waffles and sausage, ravenous after an exhausting performance. She had been exceedingly proud of his efforts, feeling powerfully attracted to her boyfriend when he was on stage. Brainy chewed silently on his piece of toast, the only thing the quiet boy had ordered. Finally, she started the difficult conversation.

"Brian, I mentioned to you earlier that Arnold is engaged to Lila." Better to cut right to the heart of it. He nodded, looking tired.

"Well, it appears that as of right before the party, that is no longer the case. Tell him, Gerald."

Gerald swallowed a mouthful of syrup and sausage, tapping the table with his finger. "My man texted me before the party. I didn't get it until we rolled up to the diner. Kinda changes the game, but apparently he and Lila got into it before the party and he broke things off. Said it was 'only fair.' Bold move, and probably the right one."

Phoebe followed it up with her analysis. "I believe that we could not have asked for anything better. Honestly, this eases things for us. If Arnold was single for the party, my conscience is significantly clearer. It might also mitigate Helga's fury at discovering their betrothal."

Brainy looked at her, obviously worried about Helga.

"Yes, it's very likely that the news would hurt her significantly. It was inevitable, though, Brian. The moment Arnold made the engagement, he was going to hurt Helga. We couldn't stop that, but we did what we could to soften the blow." Phoebe legitimately believed what they were doing was for the best. They weren't done, however. Lila was still in the game, she had to assume, and still a threat. She owed it to Lila to treat her as a very dangerous factor in their plans.

"But, if Arnold spilled the beans and Helga _didn't_ freak out, then the next part will be a lot easier," Gerald continued. "In fact, easy as pie. But we gotta assume he did, 'cause he's Arnold and the damn fool can't help but be honest even when it's gonna fuck everything up."

Brian rubbed his cheek with the flat of his hand, trying to make heads or tails of it all. Phoebe guess that he still wasn't sure what the exact sequence of events were, and that he didn't have the type of talents she or Gerald possessed for unraveling. He probably had to listen and observe for some time before he could intuit the truth of a situation. Just being told the facts didn't help him.

"So," Phoebe continued, watching Brian absorb what he could. "We told Helga that if anything happened tonight that she wasn't expecting, to meet us here. Time will tell if she is able to follow this request, or if it will even be necessary. My calculated assumption is that Arnold will be unable to resist telling Helga even if the timing is not correct, and she will come here, quite upset. Or she will run to your apartment. And that's where you're needed."

"Knowing Pataki, girl's gonna be seven different kinds of pissed off and lookin' to lash out. If you want to help, and we really think you should, the best thing to do is help her get through this as closely alinged to 'not mad at arnold anymore' as possible."

Phoebe watched Brian carefully as Gerald made their request. She was sure he would be offended that they would try to manipulate his close friendship with Helga. If she was right about how close they were, Brainy would behave in one of a few different ways.

She surprised him when he opened his mouth to reply by launching into one of the theories, the most likely to occur, to try to cut him off and set him off balance.

"You're going to refuse because you think we're being manipulative of Helga and you, and maybe even Arnold. You feel that we should let things take their course and that we shouldn't try to use your friendship with Helga as a resource to keep her and Arnold together. Your concerns are very valid, Brian, and I would concur with you entirely, except," Phoebe folded her hands in front of her, slowing down her tirade. "Helga and Arnold have never been able to connect with one another meaningfully without something terrible getting in the way. The TPi thing, the whole Jungle adventure with his parents, Lila's engagement, the list is filled with extremely unlikely and profound circumstances that seemed to always perfectly align to get in their way."

Brian hesitated, peering at her. She'd clearly set him on his heels. Good.

"Would you agree that perhaps, it's about time that we tried to counteract those forces for once, and provide them the extra strength and support they so clearly deserve so that they can be happy?" There it was. Her coups de grace. She knew she could count on Brainy being deeply sympathetic to Helga's unlucky streak, and a lifetime of lost chances and missed opportunities. She pressed on, needing to plunge the knife deeper.

"Furthermore, we are not callously manipulating them to be in love with one another - that's already the case. You saw the show. All we are doing is working against their specific natures and the enormous weight of clumsy destiny to help them achieve what is so clearly meant to be. We're not suggesting that anyone _trick_ anyone else. But Arnold is almost guaranteed to make mistakes with Helga, and Helga cannot help herself with her fury and her passion when it comes to him. They need help. That's all we're asking, is to give it to them."

Brian looked down at the table, and Phoebe was sure she had him. It helped that she spoke with absolute conviction, 100% sure in the message she delivered. She truly believed they were doing the right thing. And Helga and Arnold never had to know that they worked so hard to move mountains to give them the best chance at being together they'd ever likely get.

"Arnold has to stay in Hillwood," Gerald finally spoke up. "I can't let my best buddy leave again, but the damn fool's got his head all tied up in jungle vines and messed up shit in South America. He doesn't see how things are here now, and I'm gonna work on him, just like we want you to work with Helga. We gotta turn their heads and open their eyes. That's all."

Brian clenched his jaw and looked back up at them, nodding slowly. "Okay," he finally spoke. "I'll do it."

Phoebe and Gerald relaxed, their bodies going slack. Gerald laughed a little, looking up at the ceiling. Brian looked surprised at them, and Phoebe smiled sheepishly.

"Sorry, Brian. We're your friends, too. We know we're asking a lot of you, especially considering-" she stopped when Brian started to blush. "Well, we just know this is hard. But we're very thankful. We would never ask a favor this big if it wasn't those two. We were nervous about this confrontation."

Phoebe was full of gratitude when the conversation turned to appreciation of the show. They chatted and nibbled on their plates, mutually exhausted from a nightmarish week and cathartic night of emotional tension. It felt good to joke around with Brian again, once the difficult conversation had taken place.

Finally, it came time to part ways, and Phoebe needed to give Brian one last message. After the bill had been paid, and they were milling about outside the cafe, she touched his elbow gently. He looked down at her, surprised at the contact.

"Brian, there's one more thing." She tried to make this as gentle as she could. "Don't sleep with Helga. No matter what, whatever you do. Do not go into her bed. She may try. She may beg, she might even threaten you. We have no idea what she might do, if she is emotionally distraught. But you cannot give in. You mustn't. Please."

He just looked at her. Gerald tried to act like he hadn't heard anything. Phoebe couldn't get a read on Brainy's silent, unresponsive gaze. He left her without answering, and unsure of what his intentions might be.

* * *

"Alright, Thaddeus, you've got me in your car." Rhonda crossed one long leg over the other, impatient to get this over with. "What is this about?"

She was horrified when his previously confident face twisted into a grimace of pain, and he started to hyperventilate. She thanked God that they were at a red light, or she was certain they would have just veered into a ditch. She watched in silent horror while he clutched at his chest and gasped, his sunglasses falling off his face into his lap to reveal reddened, bloodshot eyes.

_What in the hell is wrong with him? _She became very nervous, and held her purse close to her body for comfort.

"What the _hell_ Curly, what's wrong?" She sounded as concerned as she felt. She didn't _hate _Curly, he just repulsed her physically. And mentally. In every way, actually.

He choked back a gasping sob, cutching his chest near his tie, and looked at her with pain on his face. "Everybody was so, so _mean_."

Rhonda sighed, truly exasperated but fully cognizant of why Curly was so upset. She was the only person who knew the truth, as far as she was aware.

"I d-don't under_stand_ they j-just laid into me _right away_," he struggled it out, managing to push the expensive car into motion when the light changed. "I didn't even _say_ anything and they started in with th-their _viciousness."_

_Poor Curly_, Rhonda inwardly sighed. Nobody but her in Hillwood knew it, but Curly suffered from pretty severe social anxiety. Unfortunately, he was also irrationally hostile when he was triggered, his anxiety expressing with hyperactive vitriol and bile. He was probably triggered the instant someone recognized him and teased him for his attire. Sid was a likely culprit.

"And, and then P-patty _hits _me. And Arnold, what the _hell_ happened to him? He used to always be s-so n-n-_nice._"

"Oh, Thad." Rhonda may have felt that Curly was a repulsive antithesis to her, and found his personality uncomfortably similar to hers and therefore unspeakably repellant, she wasn't devoid of compassion and fondness for his weaknesses wormed itself into a patience she sometimes could express to him. He _was_ special to her, in the manner she could manage, but the complex and confusing nature of their friendship and his unwanted romantic feelings for her kept her at a distance. Usually.

When he fell apart in private with her, Rhonda found herself unable to hate him totally. He managed to earn her compassion, born of her pity.

"They just don't know how to talk to you," she offered quietly. She texted Sid to tell him they were still in his car. "After your incident, most everyone has reason to mock you and distrust you. What you did to Sheena was...well." She didn't elaborate. _That _ugly incident didn't need to be elaborated on. Sheena was recovered now, but everybody recalled with fresh clarity his nervous breakdown and the collateral damage it inflicted on their friend.

"But so much time has passed," he bitterly replied, finally having life in his voice again. "And they are no better! None of them are innocent, they all have blood on their hands!"

"Thaddeus, I think it's maybe best if you don't come back to Hillwood." Rhonda didn't look at him. It hurt her somehow to suggest it, but she couldn't reasonably suggest any sort of attempt at reconciliation. Better to move on, and start a new life.

"I won't leave here without you," he darkly chuckled. The sound made her nervous. Her finger pressed the button to call Sid, holding it down. If she lifted her finger, Sid would be on the other line in an instant.

"I am _not _going anywhere with you, Thaddeus. Pull over. Now."

"I wish Arnold was here," he sighed, congested from the tears he had choked back. "He would fix this. I won't pull over. You're going to come with me, and listen to my apology, and then we will start over together."

Rhonda growled with impatience. "None of that is happening tonight or ever, Thaddeus. Don't make me regret feeling sympathetic to you just a moment ago. I am warning you, pull over and let. Me. Out."

He hesitated drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought. "Fine," he finally said. Maybe there was some rational side of him left. "But only if you promise to listen to my apology before you go."

She breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't going to try to take her by force.

"Alright, Thaddeus, I will listen just this once. Make it good, though. I don't think we will see much of each other tonight ever again." She meant it. He was too unstable, too unpredictable, and too threatening for her to feel safe around. Even if she felt bad for him, and felt some loyalty to their shared history, enough was just about enough.

Curly pulled them over into a parking lot. He squeezed the steering wheel with white knuckled concentration, breathing ragged and his forehead damp with sweat.

Finally, he spoke.

"I'm sorry for harassing you like an absolute churl for all these years. Nobody else _listens _to me the way you do. I always felt like we were kindred spirits, like you understood me in some way, and I became infatuated with this perception. I...made mistakes. I exacerbated the problem by amplifying my outbursts and projecting my insecurities on you and the others. When I hurt Sheena," he paused, and Rhonda watched him remember the painful memory. "Well, I have done what there is to be done about that. I just wanted to say, that I apologize to you. For everything. Watching Arnold and Helga tonight, I just couldn't stop remembering all the hideous things I have done and said. You never deserved my abuse, and I always just wanted your love and attention. I am sorry I was never able to accept that you wouldn't be mine."

Rhonda was stunned. He really had apologized. He had owned up to his awful behavior in high school. He actually apologized for all the nasty things he did when she "friendzoned" him, as he viciously put it. She was struggling to think of something to say, when he interrupted her thoughts with a final message.

"I won't bother anyone ever again. You won't have to worry about ol' Thaddeus anymore."

_That _gave her pause. She didn't push any further. She simply nodded, and put her hand on the door handle opening it slowly. She slipped out of the car, leaning down to give him one last good look. Something told her she should.

"Thank you, Thaddeus. Goodbye," she hesitated, feeling the rush of the word leaving her lungs, chilling her as it went. "And, you can call me sometime. We'll keep up."

Curly smiled sadly at her, reaching over to shut the door. Rhonda watched him drive off, pulling out of sight in the distance. She lifted her finger off the button on her phone, putting it up to her ear.

"Yeah? Everything okay?" Sid didn't beat around the bush.

"I don't know. Pick me up. I'm at the corner of Wallace and 10th."

"On my way, babe." Rhonda hung up.

_I really hope I am wrong, _she thought. _He isn't that stupid. He won't do anything to himself._

Rhonda started going through the mass of texts she got from her informants at the party, sincerely hoping she was wrong.

* * *

Lila took a long drink from her mason jar of sweet peach tea, the large ice cubes jingling and jangling in the oversized glass as she brought it to her naturally salmon colored lips. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead, sliding down her freckled cheek, and plunging down the dramatic feminine balcony of her chin. She swung gently in her porch swing, her legs dangling beneath her as the white wooden swing creaked back and forth in the late Summer night.

A few candles lit the porch around her, casting dappled and dancing amber light on everything. The house was otherwise dark, and as quiet as the two story unoccupied farmhouse ever got. Up above, just outside the mosquito netting barrier that enshrouded the porch, a beautiful night sky sliced through with the Milky Way glittered and shone onto the peaceful acres of farmlands that were her birthright.

With Arnold gone, it was all she had left. She had a mind to enjoy it while it was still hers.

She looked out over the little hill that swelled gradually up in the back of the large field she used to play in as a little girl. The happy memory of the hill pushing up under her legs as she climbed it again and again just to roll down, squealing with laughter, felt bittersweet as she rocked in her swing, no longer able to do any of that. Someday, hopefully soon, she would be able to walk again, but this farm would be long gone by that day.

Arnold had rushed to her aid immediately after the flood that took her parents. They didn't see how deep the water had been, and tried to drive through. She had cried for a week, and Arnold stayed with her the whole time, holding her hand through the funeral, attending the reading of their will, and never straying from her side. He had been a Godsend, and Lila was truly thankful for his help.

He sat down with her and helped her figure out what she was going to do about the farm. It broke her heart to sell it, especially she had finally moved back from Hillwood just a few years ago. But she and Arnold went over it in every way they could imagine, and, sadly, selling the farm was the only way. She had left the farm with Arnold later that month, and joined him in San Lorenzo while the lawyer prepared the sale.

And then everything went wrong in the jungle.

A warm breeze tinkled the wind chimes above her head. She rolled her head back, feeling the bourbon she had spiked her tea with start to warm her skin. She hadn't gotten drunk since Arnold's first night at the farm. She smiled privately at the memory of the taste of sweet corn bourbon on his lips. She had kissed him, of course. Arnold never made a move on her himself, but learned to follow her lead fast enough. She'd almost gotten him in her bed, but had been too drunk, and he kissed her forehead with affection and tucked her in and let her sleep it off, alone. She never got the nerve to try again. And now he was in Hillwood, likely doing the things with Helga that she wanted him to do with her.

The unexpected talk with Helga had been difficult. She was the last person that Lila had wanted to talk to in that moment, but in a terrible way, nothing could have been more appropriate. Arnold had broken her heart before the party and requested she remove the ring that once sat on her finger, and now lay profoundly on the table next to her, on top of her family Bible. And then Helga had killed what was left of it with her viciousness and cruelty. She had to hand it to Helga; if she had put half as much passion into keeping Arnold around before as Helga did in taking him, he might still be at her farm with her.

She drank deeply from the mason jar, the sweet burn of the bourbon mixed peach tea warming her throat and dizzying her senses. She need good old fashion stupefication tonight. She recalled the first time she drank, sneaking strawberry wine in the barn with her cousin. They had overindulged in that sickly sweet libation, tittering together at the ridiculousness of boys and the meaningless chatter of their teenage peers. She recalled she had confessed her blossoming affection for Arnold to her cousin, her freckled cheeks red from drink and embarrassment. How appropriate, then, that she would get drunk tonight and think of Arnold again.

Of course, Lila was not done. She wasn't some wilting flower. Her mother had fought to give her a sense of agency and an inner strength that she now leaned on with a thankful heart. It was worth all the typical teenage strife she had gone through with her mom, to learn the lessons of independence and principled self-confidence. She still had tools at her disposal. And Helga had given her something tonight. She had lit the dimming flames in her heart, her boastful bellows roaring to life the cooling furnaces of passion that her injury and tragedy had almost quenched.

If Sid ever gave her Rhonda's number, the pieces would begin to move. The work she had given to Phoebe and Gerald would find a foe more terrible in Lila than they ever anticipated. Only Gerald would have an inkling of what they were up against. Even he, though, would have trouble stopping her once she got started.

She set her mason jar down, the iced drink tinkling gently. Her delicate fingers rest on the black book next to her family Bible, similar in size and shape, a small moleskine with hand-worn edges and yellowed pages. There were no holy verses in her version, however.

Somehwere in Hillwood, Gerald had the only other copy of this book. His version was incomplete, however.

Fuzzy Slippers, the secret information broker for all the urban legends, rumors, and secrets of Hillwood, in actuality Lila Sawyer these many years, reached for her cell phone when it began to ring in the quiet of the late summer evening. She didn't recognize the number but was still absolutely certain it was Rhonda.

_Time to get to work,_ she thought, and answered the phone with a dainty "Hello?"


	9. Chapter 9 - White Dress Very Best

A/N: Is it just me or is Grimes literally Helga Pataki? At least in _this _fic, the physical resemblance is so exact that you really should just imagine her as playing the part of H.G.P.

So for this chapter, I am departing heavily from what we have known as my prose before. Consider this something of an experiment, but also a return to a much more raw, poetic form that I had years ago. It just felt right for this chapter, as we see the aftermath of the party through Helga, and then through Arnold.

We are working towards the next big reunion soon! Keep courage in your heart for these two. They need it!

Keeping Arnold, Chapter Nine: If She Wears a White Dress; If He Behaves His Very Best

"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane." - Philip K Dick

* * *

Ugly rotten raw riot wrinkled in long stitches with yellow sap and tar of pus in between the threads, big globs of coagulated blood tumoring around the stiff razor wire neat in rows lacing the spaces rent in shredded shards folding by clefts the suddenly severed, once firmly fully whole halves of Helga's heart, unweaving themselves in lightning chorus lancing long and inevitable.

Wounding words were never written so prettily as prose put in proper airs as the breathing heaved out in shiver-whispers by Arnold, sky blue and true and simple, strong: _I was engaged to Lila._

By oath and by vow the purest principle of affectionate amity shoved asunder in shadow forms. All created could crumble within this verse, words worn as proof against weapons of cruelty and envy. And he, oathesome and long of promise and form, architect of the phrase within the stirring complex cavity of her heart. None nulled the nimble nighted roar of her rarely reared unburdened umbral love, than the swung cudgel cunningly kept secret until the swing came round: _I was engaged to Lila._

Currents swift and terrible trembled through her tin limbs, held at akimbo angles awkward and angry to her nature, a furious form thrown to accessory of motion in the swirling nebula of calculated chaos of her stride, so suddenly stilted. Stumbling, shaking, stupefied, Helga held reality in shapes abstract and awful in her awareness, tenuous tenebrous and trembling at the edges of vision and experience. Lines crossing and plaid striped lights scissored the gaps, obscuring the path her twitching trembling limbs hurtled her headlong down with disregard to dangers.

Mind a furor, uncabled, jacked out of reason into lower awarenesses, deeper in the rolling round winters of thought, senses and sensation simply ceased to make sense. Wrestling tumble in the deeper trenches of panic, theorycrafting, woolgathering, a slave trade in struggle to simply _understand._

_Massacre massacre massacre massacre massacre! Riot riot riot riot riot! Hell hell hell HELL HELL __**HELL**__! _

Torturous thoughts swiveled from ear to ear, bouncing back through her eyeballs and pushing out tears, foaming at the breakers of eyelids squeezed in pain to see, waves crashing in agony foam through forest of thick lashes caked, mascaraed, fashioned to please. Dark rivers ran down features curled in hate, pushing through creases of rictus torment, teeth bared in junkyard threat.

Upside down reality squashed and sat on the limned edges of thought, pushing through inescapable gravity the hideous memory of the meteoric pain of _'I was engaged to Lila."_

_I am in Hell, I am in Hell, this is Hell, I am in Hell._

Every microscopic filament and incorporated shard of her tall, crooked form shuddered against the hated phrase, coherent frequency of "NO" reverberating, river-ran through, coursing the catastrophe of dim, dark, umbral denial she begged so prettily to be untrue.

_What do I do, what do I do? What am I? Where is this? This is Hell._

Grotesque grip of giddy grim, clutched at abdomen warmed by alms, sacred communion calmed within cornucopic sea of fertility, a holy offering still warm, hot, plasmatic and white, white, white, still within, _still within_, so messily forgotten and now the reminder, the clamor and the call of union recently yoked, many times over in passion and in need. Still within, still within, still within!

O, to be freed and washed of this wretched stuff of life _still within her!_

Tumult of the soul, oh urchin, greedy in all forms, grappling with the insides, like a diamond mine, paid for in blood many times over for a preciousness, a valued gift, a ransom too high. Helga, sickened to nausea, overwhelmed by the hostage of herself she paid for the privilege of Arnold, wished and wishing for an oblivion of the self.

_Unmake me! May the fleshy forms of my fingers dig through this petty pink barrier of skin and unravel every vein and capillary woven in scripture of his name! Unsex me, rid me of this gender and this figure built cell by cell to compliment his, tear from me this womb and these pillars of life at my hips that sing and bear fruit for anything less than myself! Scoop free my marrow, pluck out every hair, rid me of these breasts, my teeth, these eyes, this nose, these limbs, tear them free, unmake me! Unmake this that is Helga! Unsing the song that hummed me to breathing, if every breath thereafter has been in harmony for him! I am an obscenity, a filth, a dowry for a Liar Prince, a Beggar in Bridal Dress!_

How does one reject that which defines yourself? If what is in your soul you find hateful and obscene, if the very weave of the fiber of your being is a loathsome, abhorrent needle in the skin, what else is there but to destroy everything, and hope that there are enough pieces left in the aftermath to rebuild something recognizable.

Helga spiraled into herself, pounding feet with pendulous purpose on concrete cold and uncaring, pushing herself towards the ugly rim of some awful horizon of tomorrow, the navigated hunting paths of a Neolithic, savage time and place of brutal messes and blood, entrails, meat, bone, viscera, _corpse._

_Reject me from this hateful Earth! O Gravity, reverse your prideful course and cease your inevitable pressing of my wretched form! Hurtle me bodily, my silhouette aflame with the speed of this ejection, relativistic speeds stretching me thin and infinite, until the bonds of my essence snap successfully and I am rent apart as I blur past the lonely edges of remote solar systems! In this lonely neighborhood between stars, may I freeze and may the eons see my atoms depart from one another until I am Gone! Helga Geraldine Pataki!_

Bounding, braying in madness and wroth of wrinkled wounded affection, a massive ribbed and boney apparition of some distant specter's past looming in impenetrable silence where a shadow should stalk behind her, Helga came by instinct or by miserable fate to the very position in space where once a little blonde boy of immeasurable kindness and light blinked quasar streams of white and silvery starlight cream, the moon, the little flavor of flame and honorable piety to goodness gave to Helga her Heart.

Drenched as by a flood of hate sweat, shivering with fury and pain, Helga stared at the bow-topped reflection of that distant past in the street-front window, now Woman, now fully Made Whole by the stirring of something unnamable she shared with that Other.

The contents of her stomach pushed themselves painfully past her teeth, she bent double and a miserable shriek pulling with that emptying spill. That gruesome bile sputtered and spat from the open wound of her mouth, so recently kissing around Arnold's body, so recently a red wet flower pressing love into the warmth of a chest she spent a lifetime wanting, contained within it every last ounce of kindness in her heart for Arnold Shortman and Lila Sawyer. Every brutal heave was the verse of a prayer to curse them dead.

Helga Pataki wiped her mouth, renewed and made unwhole, broken into what may someday reassemble and shamble into a shape resembling the _H.G.P._ of a distant yesterday, and stared at the empty creature that shook, thin and skeletal, in the mirrored reflection of the street window, fogged by the heat of her expulsive explosive self-execution.

* * *

Arnold held the biting cold ice pack onto his face, standing dumbstruck and numb in the quiet gloom of the kitchen. Helga had gone, a terrible storm of fury from the building. He heard her pained shrieking, inarticulate and wordless, echoing down the street for blocks until the din of traffic drowned it out in the extreme distance.

He had never seen anyone so angry and _hurt._ He'd never imagined such fury. Words and thoughts escaped him, and he merely stood shirtless in the empty spaces of the kitchen, waiting in between his heart beats to make sure it wouldn't stop.

Within the honest heart of himself, Arnold knew he deserved the rancor and violence he withered under from Helga. Hideous regret and guilt had piled in him, mounting impressive peaks of outlandish nightmare with which he was resigned to clash himself against in an endless Mea Culpa. From the moment he betrayed his true heart for the appeasement of another's grand fantasy, he set himself down a path of false righteousness. Now there were two women in ruins because of the clumsy, too-naive fumblings of an ocean of good intentions and a hearth built of empathy over restraint.

Arnold sat in the kitchen chair of his youth, trembling from the adrenaline crash and the nauseating pain of a bruised cheek bone. Her strike was true, but had just barely missed a critical structure that would have ruined his face, perhaps permanently. The blue bulge of the ice pack stank of rubber and Freon, but dulled the angry heated throb of the fateful impact enough that he could manage to move his jaw.

_How did this happen?_

Arnold knew full _well_ how it happened. It had been his hand on the blade that cut and severed the bonds they painstakingly, fearfully exposed themselves to build. Months ago, when we squatted in front of Lila's wheelchair and made a promise neither he nor his spirit had the capacity to keep. An empty promise as meaningless as the wind it took to speak it, but bullying and bowling over everything in its calamitous path like a Jovian hurricane many planets in scale. None were totally blameless, none escaped unscathed without a morsel of blame pinned to their vests, displayed. Lila was just as shakily aggrieved and guilty to him, asking of him an impossibility, crunching him to her wounded body and daring to utter _forever._ Helga hoarded blame; within the atomic furnace of her stellar fusion heated heart, unforgiving and unyielding, an avalanche of flame named _Envy _penetrated the shrine to each other they built with their bodies.

_Her open mouth in passion._

Selfish, sensual thoughts of sensations ghostly and recent invaded the trauma of the naked now. Helga had done things with and to him that even an active imagination would merely play at recreating; never had he lost himself in the exuberant joy of another, and never could he imagine anything as profoundly important to his soul. Like the unformed blade of some ancient smith, they were folded together, then hammered into one shape in thousands of repetitions. She was the forge and the water that quenched their heat. He was the hammer and the unmoving anvil. Working in whirlwinds, flesh melded, Arnold and Helga had touched the lights within themselves together, daring for that unspeakable spark to close the gap between their individualities by means of a love so hot and pure it was _elemental._

And in the wake of such a sacred ritual, a hymn finally joined by two voices in microscopically perfect harmony, the hideous blemish of the mistaken past profaned every space and corner of their shared temple of worship. Every Icon was desecrated. Every Image blasphemed. All forms of Truth in the hallowed halls gone.

What was left to salvage? What even could be done? Was there even some alchemy of effort that could miraculously transmute the dense and lifeless lead of this corpse of a thing into the vibrant living gold they found together again?

Drunk thoughts, exhausted images of a bleak future alone in San Lorenzo taunted him. Squeezing his eyes shut, Arnold struggled to seek answers against the galaxy of flashes of lights against his eyelids, the apparitions of sight lit in defiance against the backdrop of willful blindness. What writing on these inner walls could be shone upon by those haunting motes, those shapeless dancing forms of imagined visions? What was within his heart except the false wisdom of a too-old man called Good, who saw all his works crumble to ruin and naught in the end? What victory in this bleak and blasted wreckage, despaired Arnold, could bring something resembling a repaired and healthy tomorrow?

The absolute lunacy of accepting another human being into your heart, and placing them within your identity, and rebuilding the walls around yourself to accommodate this new shared existence, and changing the locks so that they could come and go as they please, and nodding and saying _yes this is how I wished to live_, and pushing every nervous fear and nightmarish anxiety of betrayal or abandonment or-worst of all-apathy down into the basements of thought where they could not ever dare to disturb you, and living knowing the storm is coming every day and doing _absolutely nothing _to guard against its destructive passage, and simply _trusting_ that _everything will be all right with them in this piece of you now_, is a naked bravery of exceptional stupidity and the single most important facet of the shared existence in human experience; without this conscious insanity, executed against yourself, what would be left except billions of scared strangers simply waiting to die?

And so Arnold, struggling with his own betrayer's heart, resolved to discover what, if anything was to be done about Helga.

* * *

Helga collided with the room when she entered it, frightening Brian into dropping the glass of water he was drinking, the concussive force of her re-entry into a Human space blasting everything around them with titanic calamity. Eyes hot with rage, the prime, elemental Helga wildfired against the walls of their apartment, the glass-tearing pitch of her shriek splitting the seams of their enclosed ceiling sky.

Helga, galvanized by this new vibration discovered in incoherent, indecipherable agony, vibrated the very air around her with this fever of fresh broken identity. Extreme fragility laced throughout with iron rebar, a lattice of exquisite construction and permanent strength, an Eiffel Tower of herself, shot through full of holes yet standing tall and proud and iconic. Brian was electrified by the verve of her effervescent, manic exultations. She barely noticed his presence, for what is a man to a goddess but one of countless others? In the terror-cadence of her heart, which beat in wild defiance of the hideous criminal injuries that rent it in twain, what room was there for the petty mewling existence of a mortal man extruding his unwanted irritant _self _into the perfect calamity of her newfound spirit?

Colors never seemed to touch her as she floated in speeds too fast to track to take him.

Brian held helpless hands in protest against her, struggling with laughably pathetic strength of a single human being against the all-consuming, unstoppable juggernaut of her rage hurt. Helga laughed his folly into his mouth. Resisting the kiss of a horned beast, stepping blood-slicked and gore-flecked into the innocent wood of some callipygian nymph to wrest that innocence away, was as laughably impossible as asking tomorrow not to come.

His blood filled her mouth as he filled her teeth. She became dizzy at the taste of it, teeth painted with the rushing copper water of life. When Helga parted him from her, she dropped her head back and laughed, trophy of her viciousness drooling in scarlet down her cheek, then jaw, then a swift line down the swan's curve of her neck. To fill her teeth with this eager prey, leaping as a frightened rabbit accidentally into the pursuing jaws of a wolf, to taste the sour tang of fear in the flesh and the sharp note of pain in the blood, and to conquer this moment, to reckon it _hers_, and no one else's, that is what rolled laughter from her throat. That is what had her throw Brian headlong away from her, a snarl of disgust escaping her like a beast.

Into the nest she stalked. Her feathers were mottled and molded, and she had the mind to correct them into shining silver brilliance again.

She heard the coughing, the dragging, and the spitting of the man she marked behind her, Brian folding his limbs under himself for purchase, struggling to rise to the sink and spit the black clot of scabrous blood she sheared out of his tongue. A disastrous song hummed itself in her blood-smeared lips as she regarded the pathetic inch-high reflection of the creature she _used to be _staring frightened at her in the mirror. In no time, this wretched, unwanted vision would be exercised from her imperious gaze, and only the majesty of this new, royal flesh would shine forth, a terrible radiance. All powerful. Without form or boundaries. Untouchable by the weapons of Man. Unharmed by Arnold, and invincible to Him.

Hands orchestrated a chrysalis symphony of change, cascading the harsh astringencies of bleach through the gold wheat of her hair.

Color drained from her, washing down the drain every happy yellow she ever knew.

A bath so hot she blistered scoured every cell he had ever touched from her skin.

Helga stepped from the nest, renewed, different, savage and beautiful and full of predator's grace. Brian watched her, appropriately fearful of the Lioness stalking him in circles through their shared spaces. The scent of sex clung to the air. Blood tinged this fog, Brian's blood, spilled unwillingly and gulped by both hunter and victim in shared communion: of Brian's blood they both tasted, and now she would taste his flesh.

Pressing into his space, molding the heated and raw and pink form of herself against the weak shape of a man, Helga willed his passion into fullness. A delighted hand touched him, eyes full of lightning and dark with the hunt. Brian offered up the moan he had held for seventeen years, a pretty gift to the goddess that commanded his flesh into compliance.

His hand pressed against her. He struggled to push her away.

Helga's heart stopped, then exploded into murderous fearful beating.

Sick panic rose with tsunami suddenness within her. The Sun Goddess' skin shed. Peeled away, it left The Girl naked, afraid, trembling, rejected _again_ by the weak hands of _men._

Unspeaking, Helga retreated to her room, no longer a nest but a cage. Curling in the meaningless safety of the bed empty of Arnold, Helga's tortured heart begged for quietude and oblivion. She wanted to recede, to have the corners of her vision darken and retract until only a pinprick of light remained, and to have her hearing roar with quiet until her ears rang, and to feel the annihilation of a dreamless sleep drape her into nothingness. She prayed for this. She prayed to a nameless form she gave no shape to take Today from her, and keep Tomorrow for the bargain.

At last, sleep came.

* * *

Arnold stood suddenly, brought to the present from unpleasant memory by the persistent rapping knock of someone at the front door. He was not expecting anyone, and the small percussion was too _gentle _to be Helga. He set the ice pack down on the table, walking briskly to the front door. Swinging it open, the concerned faces of Phoebe and Gerald looked up at him from the stoop, apparently unsurprised by the state he found himself in.

He stared at them silently for some time, his face a passive expression of antipathy.

"Arnold," Phoebe started, and Arnold walked away from the entrance, leaving the door open. He didn't feel like talking - his face hurt too much, for one - but he knew that they had something important to tell him, and answers for questions he intended to ask them.

The two of them stepped tentatively into the kitchen, silently watching Arnold, shirtless, refresh the ice pack with new cubes. He didn't try to be quiet about rummaging in the ice bin in the freezer, feeling that this tiny tumult was enough to express his exasperation.

Phoebe sat at the table, visibly searching for the words to say to her friend. Arnold sat across from her, leaning back in the chair, holding the ice pack to his swelling bruised face. Watching her.

She finally started to speak.

"Arnold, we understand that you broke off your prior engagement with Lila." Silence. She pressed on. "We also understand that your informed Helga of the same former arrangement. I'm guessing she did...that."

"Shit man, you okay?" Gerald couldn't hold his tongue any longer, the tension in the air between the old friends palpable and suffocating.

"Helga nearly took my head off. I'm pretty sure she cracked my cheekbone. It's a good thing I know how to take a punch the right way, or we'd be doing this in the hospital."

His two friends winced. He found himself feeling oddly hostile to the gesture.

"She tore out of here in a frenzy and told me to never speak to her again."

"Wow, that bad, huh?" Gerald clicked his tongue, crossing his arms in front of him. "She sure doesn't pull any punches."

Arnold just looked at Gerald, unsure if that was intended to be a joke.

"Well," Phoebe interjected, "what is important right now is what we do next. The next steps are critical, and time-sensitive, we don't have much time to act before-"

"I'm sorry," Arnold interrupted her. "Next steps? Act? You've lost me, Phoebe. I intend to honor her request. She sealed it pretty convincingly. It was _hand delivered_."

Gerald and Phoebe blushed at the admonishment. Still, Phoebe pressed on.

"Arnold I am sure that if you logically look at this situation, you'll see that it is salvageable and a product of passions inflamed and let loose without restraint. If cooler heads prevail, and with a little luck, we may be able to reverse the damage that has been done."

Arnold felt a little ill at the thought of approaching Helga again. He'd never forget the chilling look in her eyes when she demanded he never speak to her again. She was deadly serious.

"Phoebe, I appreciate you wanting to help, I really do, but this isn't going to be something we can just talk out."

"Listen to yourself, man. You're _always_ the one that says we can just talk things out." Gerald sat next to Arnold when he made his point.

"It's not that I'm not willing to talk, it's that she is violently opposed to the idea. If I could just explain myself, maybe she would understand and we could move past this. But you didn't see her, Gerald. You either, Phoebe. It was _bad._"

Phoebe and Gerald looked at each other with worry. The look concerned Arnold, but also made him suspicious.

"What? What do you two know?"

Phoebe slowly pulled her phone from her purse, swiping the screen a few times and then showing Arnold an image on the high definition screen. It was Helga, staring at herself in a storefront window, haggard, wet with sweat, her eyes occluded with blind berserker fury.

A caption over the top read, in white block lettering, "LOOKS LIKE THE DATE DIDN'T GO SO WELL LOL"

Arnold narrowed his not swollen eye and grabbed her phone. "Who sent this? What is this?!"

Gerald sighed and pointed at the phone. "An unknown number sent that picture to me, to Phoebe, and we're pretty sure everybody from PS118. Including Helga, is my guess."

Blitzkrieg confusion toppled Arnold's self-control. He felt himself start to hyperventilate. Who could be mocking her? Mocking _him?_ And _why?_

"It's Fuzzy Slippers, is my guess." Gerald held eye contact with Arnold when he shot him a confused, disbelieving look. "He's the only one well connected enough in Hillwood to get a picture like this and distribute it so quickly. We got this text maybe twenty, thirty minutes ago? And came here right away when we did."

"_Fuzzy Slippers?_ The fake person you made up for your stories?"

Phoebe shook her head, taking her phone back from Arnold's still outstretched hand. "Fuzzy Slippers is a real person. However, Gerald and myself were never able to puzzle out their true identity."

"How? That was all _real?_"

"Well, sort of," Gerald started. "It's a really long story, but the basic gist of it is that, Fuzzy Slippers was an urban legend himself for a long time. I'd hear a rumor or a tall tale and it'd have his name attached. Hell, sometimes the stories would be about people we knew, sometimes it'd even be about _us_, but I never heard nothing about the actual person behind the name until middle school."

"Why? What happened then?" Arnold was amazed this was the first he'd ever heard of this story. What else was Gerald keeping secret?

"Fuzzy Slippers started to move _against_ folks. Rumors started getting uglier, then there was evidence of some private stuff getting leaked, and people started getting really hurt. Like, real hurt. Nadine moved away it got so bad. Rhonda had to lay real low for a bit."

"You act like this all came to an end? What stopped it?"

"Well, we did." Gerald flashed a grin. "Really, it was mostly an accident. Fuzzy Slippers got sloppy. Phoebe and I were on their trail for a long time, years, trying to map out their movements based on the timeline of secret events that were getting outed. We even set up a sting."

"It was Gerald's idea. We decided to purposefully rendezvous in a somewhat conspicuous, but still only privately known to ourselves location and...begin our romantic relationship. We set the location along a known path of travel that we had established as a pattern for Fuzzy Slippers...our intent was to catch them in the act, or at least catch one of their informants."

"What we got was even better." Gerald pulled something out of his back pocket, setting it on the table. Arnold recognized the book Gerald had let him borrow to find Helga. The little black book with all the secrets of Hillwood carefully scribed.

"_That's_ how you got this? Fuzzy Slippers gave it to you?"

"Nah man. Dropped it. We almost saw 'im, and started chasing the sonovabitch down. I don't know if they dropped it on purpose to lose us or if it was an accident. Either way, it stopped everything. I mean, dead stop. Fuzzy Slippers _vanished _man, just gone into thin air. All traces gone. The scent dried up. So we stopped chasing. It's been a long time since we heard a damn thing from Fuzzy Slippers."

Arnold set the ice pack down on the table, digesting this story slowly. "So what, you think that they came back, specifically to harass Helga and me? Why? Who would want to do that?"

Phoebe calmly put her hand on Arnold's. "We're not sure. We very carefully eliminated the possibility that Fuzzy Slippers was _anyone_ from PS118. I went over the data myself. Everyone from PS118 had something _extremely terrible_ happen to them because of Fuzzy Slippers. _Everyone._ It's someone from the outside, and someone who is particularly invested in all of our personal inner lives. My theory is that your return somehow inspired them to return to activity. Unraveling the meaning behind this move will be the key to discovering their identity and making them stop for good."

"Why me though? Why Helga?"

"You're the most prominent target. What better way to announce your arrival than to capitalize on this disaster between you two? Everyone at PS118 will know that he is back, and capable of hurting us again."

Exhaustion permeated every cell in Arnold's body. Emotionally exhausted from the roller coaster ride of breaking things off with Lila, then the miracle of the party and Helga's show, and then the live-defining heart-trauma of reconnecting to her, followed by that final hideous moment when she left him, stricken, Arnold felt incapable of handling this new development. It was most certainly unwelcome. His body ached; Helga had not been easy on him tonight, at any juncture. What was left of courage in him felt vestigial and remote to his access. If facing Fuzzy Slippers required that he harness his heart, he'd need time to find a new way to harness it.

A slow, molasses crawl thought of sweet sickness grew inside him. What he found most repugnant of it was that only he could have the perspective to think it, as abhorrent as it was. He voiced this awful thing, hoping to dispel it by means of speaking the ridiculousness of it aloud.

"It might be Lila."

If they were surprised or shocked, Phoebe and Gerald couldn't be seen expressing it physically. Maybe Arnold was too exhausted to notice the nuances of their expressions any longer.

"It's not possible," Phoebe finally said.

"Yeah, you're right," Arnold admitted, relieved that he could forget he thought it.

"It can't be her, because she has been hurt by Fuzzy Slippers maybe more than anyone else," Phoebe explained further.

Arnold rubbed his eyes. He felt like finding this Fuzzy Slippers person and giving them ten times the treatment Helga had given him.

"Well whoever it is, we'll need to talk about what to do tomorrow morning. I'm too tired to keep this up tonight. Too much happened."

"Agreed, a fresh start tomorrow is just what we need. Why don't you meet us at the diner?"

"The diner? Again?" Gerald sounded annoyed. "Why don't we meet him here? I'm tired of pancakes."

"Does that work for you, Arnold?" Phoebe sounded patient.

He rubbed his cheek with his fingers, pressing into the sore spot of contact. He really just wanted to sleep and end this nightmare of a day. He wanted to see Helga. He wanted to hold her again, and to apologize, and make her understand.

"Just tell me you've got a plan." He sounded desperate enough to surprise himself with the force of his pleading.

"We do. It's a good plan."

"A helluva plan, buddy. We've got something big right around the corner. You, Phoebe, and myself, all going with Helga to her dad's beach house next weekend."

Arnold didn't have the energy to be surprised anymore. "Of course that's the plan. That's exactly what we need, cramming Helga in a beach house with me, the guy she just decked. Perfect. Listen, I'm too tired right now to worry about how that will possibly happen or work. I just need to sleep. I'll see you two in the morning."

Arnold saw his friends out the door, politely but firmly refusing to hear any more details of this new development. They were crazy. He felt simultaneously blessed and cursed to have such insanity on his side.

When he tenderly laid his head on his pillow, still smelling of Helga's faint perfume and the bodily scent of her, the coital mingling of hers and his, Arnold immediately fell into a fitful, troubled sleep, full of dreams of a sun goddess that melted his wax wings.

* * *

Helga's eyes cracked open, slivers of darkness of her room betraying that it was still evening, or at least early morning. Something nudged her weakly, no doubt the selfsame nuisance that pestered her awake moments before. Bleary-eyed, exhausted to the extreme, and only dimly remembering the tumult of her evening thus far, Helga pushed her naked form up into sitting, and peered down at the side of her bed in the darkness to assess whether she meant to violently abjure the vexation daring her to break slumber.

Brian shook gently in the darkness, holding his hand over his mouth, darkness slick over his fingers and face, skin a pale canvas that moonlight shone silvery white.

Helga's mind awoke to full alertness at the thick smell of blood coming from Brian, mingling with the sharp tang of the taste of it, ghostly reminder of something terrible she had done to her loyal friend.

_You can't even control your anger_, a cruel voice spat at her from the corners of her mind. Helga's hand flipped the lights on in a flash, brilliantly illuminating the darkness of her room, shining her attentions to the chaos of her previous passage, laid out in gruesome diorama before her very eyes. Those same watering crystal blue eyes held contact with Brainy's, now rolling and fluttering into unconsciousness.

She had wounded him most viciously. She recalled biting into the fat flesh of his tongue, drawing blood. The sick memory of _drinking_ this made her ill, and willed up the contents of her stomach onto her bed, mostly a sticky web of mucous and the brown clots of what she had drank from Brainy in her fury.

Clothes found themselves on her, she wasn't sure how, and she was belting Brian into the passenger seat of his van, trying not to panic.

_The reward for your loyal love is a lifetime of pain,_ that sinister feeling called to her again.

"Shut up!" She shrieked. Brian's eyes opened a little, and he turned his head to regard her in the driver's seat of his van, confused.

_Great, now you're talking to yourself, Helga. But for real. _It reminded her of the time Arnold had left. That terrible time, filled with violence and ugly memory, and hurt. What had brought her to self-control had been lashing out and hurting herself. Now, it seems, someone she loved dearly had taken her place in her stead. She pressed her foot harder on the accelerator, hoping to outrun her conscience.

She fireman carried Brian into the minor emergency, helping him fill out the paperwork and giving him water to drink. He held on to consciousness for the majority of the wait, holding onto her hand as well, and holding his mouth.

_I can't believe I did this because of Arnold._ She was certain Brian would never want to speak to her again, once he could start speaking.

_I did this because Arnold __betrayed__ me,_ she realized with a sick shock. _He asked Lila to marry him. Somewhere, in some stinking jungle, the same jungle he told me he loved me and kissed me for the first time, Arnold got on bended knee and presented a precious ring, sick with butterflies and hoping for a future with someone __else.__ Not just anyone, Lila Sawyer._

Helga felt an awful thing clawing at the edges of her awareness, threatening to pull itself lurching into strength again, scrabbling and clawing at the cage she hemmed it in. A fury in her with overwhelming strength begged for release again. She felt so _good_ when she let go. The violence in her felt _amazing_ when she let it loose, and she didn't feel so weak and powerless any longer. Arnold robbed her of all her agency, he took everything from her that made her feel normal.

_But he did say 'was,' _a small, trembling and fearful voice spoke up. She looked at Brian next to her, sleepily, weakly watching C.O.P.S. on the waiting room television. She chewed the inside of her lip nervously, unwilling to let that kernel of hope find purchase in her heart.

Brian got called and she stood up to help him. She was surprised when he stood under his own strength, shaking his head for her to not follow him in. Fear touched her, as did worry. What would he say?

His hand lifted from his mouth, and he smiled a red smile at her. "It's okay," he slurred. "I just bit my tongue."

Helga fell back into her chair, hands going over her eyes so he didn't see her start crying again. Brian didn't even blame her. He didn't even _think_ to blame her. Overwhelming guilt harried her heart, harassing it into hysterical pounding. She felt faint, and got herself a paper cup of cool water, hand trembling as she drank.

She was worried about Brian. But, she realized, she was also worried about Arnold.

_Oh god, I hit him. I really hit him. I hit him as hard as I could. I put everything behind that punch. I really hit him. I can't believe I did that, my sweet Arnold, right after I had finally confessed my truest, most tender affections and expressed them physically with you! I can't believe the exclamation point at the end of tonight's sentence is a literal punchline, delivered in fury, with an encore of nearly biting my best friend's tongue out. What a hideous beast I am, what a shambling mess of aggression and anger. What is wrong with me, that my reaction to Arnold's painful confession is to try and kill everyone? Is Arnold's broken past really so terrible?_

Helga sat with her hands in her eyes, worrying, arguing with herself, her newly silvery white hair a cascading curtain around her features.

_Can I forgive him for this? Should I? Is it possible to give up his first __engagement__ and forgive that it didn't belong to me? Do I have the required grace to forget that he's been with Lila before he was with me? Can I stomach the feel of his hands when they first felt her?_

_Can I live without him if I can't let it go?_

Helga didn't have the answers. She put everything she had into tonight's performances, the party was a massive release of ten years of pent up history and frustration. Every day of missing him was in those songs, every moment she had bitterly missed his presence calibrated in verse and harmony.

But all of that was an expression of their _past._ She didn't know what their future would look like. It didn't exactly have a good start.

_You had him, you held him in your arms. He was inside of you, and you bared your soul to him and he accepted it. Never forget this night,_ she swore to herself. It infuriated her that she was unable to remember that impossible joy without also remembering that ugly admission. She felt angry that Arnold had ruined this long-awaited connection with his stupid history with Lila.

_Maybe you can have him again._ That same little voice spoke up in her heart.

She looked up when the door opened, Brian coming out with a cleaned up smile. He slapped his prescription in her hand, taking her arm to walk to the van while she read his script.

_Vicodin. Brainy's gonna have a good time. And I can get started worrying about how I'm going to apologize to him._

After starting the van, looking over at Brian's exhausted form start to fall into sleep, Helga tentatively allowed herself to think: _And apologize to Arnold._

Despite herself, she realized, as she drove them home, she could not imagine a Helga without Arnold. The beasts within her that haunted the sacred spaces of her heart threatened to destroy her and everyone around her when she harnessed her passions, but Helga Geraldine Pataki loved Arnold Shortman, and she would just have to learn to control these violences. Nobody was perfect, not even him. There were bound to be complications. She would find a way to try to forgive the unspeakable crime of not being First.

She realized with a sad, grim determination, that loving Arnold was all she knew to do. There wasn't a next step without it being taken towards him. Somehow, someway, there would have to be reconciliation. She hoped she had it in herself to find it, and that Arnold would receive whatever apologies she could muster up.

The alternative was an oblivion she dared not name.


	10. Chapter 10 - Gun-Toting Urchins

A/N: A big thank you to all the readers that took the time to offer their frank and candid feedback on chapter nine. While I can totally see where the style and execution was jarring and maybe even an unwelcome departure from my typical prose, ultimately last chapter has some of the best prose I've ever written and I stand by it. A close fan turned me onto the literary concept of "The Dark Night of the Soul," and without meaning to that is precisely what I wrote into the story. After the false climax of chapter six and the dramatic turn of chapter seven, the dramatic and challenging and uncomfortable poetic form of chapter nine ultimately accomplished what I needed and wanted: to get you in Helga's head. It's a dramatic place to be, as some of you pointed out. :)

Chapter 10 is a grab-bag of POVs, intended to give you more back story and clarify some things.

Please R/R and follow if you like the story! This will likely be the only story I ever write at before I start something I intend to publish. Your criticism and critique gives me valuable experience in editing my work and creating believable plots. And your dedication and commitment to interest in my work gives me the confidence to keep going!

Also! I've created a tumblr blog to provide story updates/chapter progress, and to talk about my story and characterizations in general. I'll also be talking about my favorite passages I've written, and what my favorite things to write where, and in general talk about my process. If you're interested, follow me on tumblr, username Lachesis-ism.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 10: Gun-Toting Urchins

"For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first." - Suzanne Collins

* * *

Rhonda held her hand over her mouth, too shocked to offer one of her typically snappy retorts or witty rebuttals to Lila's world-changing revelation, delivered moments ago by that very same girl in tearful, emotive confession: _she was engaged to Arnold._

Needless to say, this changed matters considerably.

Rhonda wasn't one to pay too much stock in most relationships. She'd had her hand in ruining several, in fact, and was quite proud of the fact that she had the skill and subtlety necessary to squeeze a couple's weaknesses until their bonds shattered. In her inestimably lofty opinion, any pairing that couldn't withstand her simple ministrations was doomed to part eventually anyway. It helped keep her conscience clear that she'd only ever broken up _teenage_ romances, and young love is cheap; I mean, it's _everywhere._ It can't be worth much.

But an adult betrothment, between two beautiful people with kind, nurturing souls and, as far as she knew, totally clean rap sheets? That was a rare jewel, expensive as it was needful, and she was not some emotionless _harpy_ that could so easily and effortlessly discard the significance in the binding of a gold ring studded with diamonds. The sheer ceremony _alone_ in a man, taking bended knee before his beloved, and offering up whatever lowly sum of his life he could to the girl standing before him was enough to give Rhonda significant romantic pause.

She had a soft spot for weddings, and engagements, largely because she couldn't possibly imagine herself ever accepting a proposal to _anyone_ (nobody would ever be worthy), and that made it a covetous, enviable item indeed.

"You and Arnold were _engaged?_" All she could manage was a shocked reiteration of the very statement Lila just pronounced, offered in disbelief as a question she required additional confirmation to accept.

"Yes, I'm ever so sorry to say that we were engaged to be married. We'd even set a date, oh-so romantically on _Christmas Day._ My Arnold sure knows how to woo a lady." Lila's heartbreak was audible in her recounting the story.

"D-d-details. Give me details, please, Lila, please darling, explain what you mean. I can't, this is just, I mean can you _explain _what you _mean?_" Rhonda struggled with herself. Sid stared at her from across the room, sitting shirtless against the backboard of the hotel bed. His look was quizzical. He'd heard Rhonda. The confusion was just as clear on his face as well.

"Well, I'm ever so sure I mean exactly what I said, Rhonda. Arnold asked me to marry him not so long ago, and I was just oh so happy and deliriously head-over-heels for the sweet boy that I said _yes._ And then tonight, he broke the engagement _off_, leaving me awfully confused and heartbroken."

"He did _what_?" Rhonda felt herself grow immeasurably angry. Arnold, that _dog_. He broke off his engagement to sweet Lila Sawyer so that he could play around with nasty, impossible _Helga._ On what planet did that make sense? By what authority did he ruin a life so that he could ruin his own with Pataki, of all people? She felt sickened that she had helped the couple come together tonight, even getting up on stage to shake her _moneymaker_ for God's sake.

"Yes, I'm afraid he broke off the engagement just a few hours ago. Right before he left for some party."

"Yes, the party. I was there, with him. Do you know about Helga?"

"Helga?" Lila sounded a little surprised. "Well...I know that she had never written him back any letters, and we've talked many many times at great length about his ever so unresolved issues of abandonment with Helga. I suspect it was a simple transference of his feelings of abandonment from his parents, once he found them. Arnold never agreed. I assumed he would probably attempt to get the closure he needed from Helga as part of his visit to Hillwood...but that's all I know about _Helga._ Why? What do you know? What happened?"

Rhonda listened with increasing fury and impatience. Arnold didn't even tell his _fiancée _that he was off _cherry picking _back home with Pataki. She honestly couldn't believe how out of character it was for Arnold. She'd even _kissed_ him, the snake.

"Arnold and Helga left the party together." No use in hiding the truth from her. Lila deserved better.

A long pause of silence. Lila didn't seem to be on the line, until Rhonda was about to check if the line had disconnected and Lila finally spoke.

"It was bound to happen eventually, I suppose." The saddened resignation in her voice killed Rhonda.

Rhonda _liked_ Lila. Loved her, even. Lila and Rhonda had been very good friends in the past, and before all the ugliness with Fuzzy Slippers, practically bosom buddies. Sisters from another mister. Rhonda kicked herself for not keeping in touch with Sawyer after she left; the busy demands of ruling a High School had simply taken her attentions elsewhere. The fact that she hadn't even kept Lila's phone number was unforgivably sloppy of her.

"But Lila, you reached out to me specifically with a request for help. You said only I could do it. What is it?"

"Ah, well, it seems you already helped me. I was hoping you could keep an eye on Arnold for me...make sure he didn't get into any trouble before I get to Hillwood."

"You're coming here?" Rhonda couldn't imagine Lila now, much older than her teenage self and so much more mature. It would be a sight.

"As soon as I am able to make arrangements with a hotel with wheelchair access."

"_Wheelchair_ access? What in the blazes are you talking about, Lila?"

A sad tale indeed unfolded, a tale of Lila following Arnold bravely into the jungles, of risking her life and paying the price of her healthy legs to save him from a deadly fall. Rhonda couldn't believe her ears. It sounded like an exceptionally complex teenage _drama_, not very much like real life.

"Once I was injured, Arnold became very sullen and, well, distant. I assumed it was because he was ever so nervous to ask me to marry him, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was because being with me just reminded him of how much he wanted to be with Helga instead."

"He doesn't deserve your kindness, Lila. Not if any of this is true."

"I am afraid all of it is," she added. "Every ugly word."

Rhonda glanced at Sid; he looked back at her, only hearing half of the conversation but visibly shaken nonetheless. He shook his shoulders, pantomiming that he had no idea what to do.

Rhonda knew what to do, however.

"I _can_ help you, Lila." Rhonda's voice had a determined cast.

"How? I'm ever so certain what's done has been done."

"Maybe, maybe not. I'll find out, and fast. If there's anyone that can help you in Hillwood, it's me. I'm just going to verify some things first, but then I will be your eyes and ears in Hillwood. I can't _believe_ Arnold, and Helga is no better."

"Well, _maybe_ there's one _teensy_ thing you can do for me." A pregnant pause filled the spaces between Rhonda's guesses as to what she might mean. "Just find out how things went after they left the party."

"That's already on my to-do list, Lila. Don't worry. You're in good hands."

The two girls parted ways and Rhonda sat pensively at the little dark wood desk opposite the hotel bed, mind racing.

_Lila leaves Hillwood after the Fuzzy Slippers incident. Years later, her parents pass. Arnold leaves San Lorenzo to spend time with her. They both go back to San Lorenzo. Arnold falls down a mountain or something, and then Lila gets put in a wheelchair saving him. They come back to her farm, where Arnold proposes to her. Arnold comes back to Hillwood. Phoebe and Gerald organize this big party with Helga as the main focus. Arnold breaks up with Lila, and hooks up with Helga. That's about it, I think._

She pressed her fingers into her eyes.

"What's up, baby? Everything okay?" Sid's genuine concern would have touched her heart were she not busy.

"No, not in the slightest. Arnold's _not_ the perfect Angel we all remember, and I aim to test this little fling of his with Helga."

"This all sounds pretty uncool of him. I bet it's all a misunderstanding. It doesn't seem like Arnold."

"No, it certainly doesn't. I need eyes on the street, Said." She turned around to face him. "Get the word out to your peons. Anyone sees Pataki, I want pictures of her. Maybe we'll get lucky and get her mid walk of shame."

"Sure, baby. But why?" Sid was obediently cutting a fresh line for her. She adored his anticipation of her needs usually. Now she just found it slightly irksome.

"We're going to resurrect the ghost of Fuzzy Slippers, and see if we can't scare up some trouble. I want to sow a little chaos in Arnold and Helga's world right now, and see what pops up."

"_Fuzzy Slippers? _That guy the fucked with everybody's lives? Are you sure you wanna make people think he's back?"

"Just a little bogeyman to keep everyone honest and nervous. I get the feeling that Phoebe and Gerald knew a _lot_ more about this whole situation than they let on, and I aim to get answers."

Rhonda drummed her fingers on the wood table impatiently.

_Now we just hope the __real__ Fuzzy Slippers doesn't notice, or this is going to get ugly._

* * *

Lila set the phone down, a soft smile on her lips. It was done. The pieces were put into place.

One of the things she loved the most about taking the mantle of Fuzzy Slippers was how effortless the role was. She was so well liked, respected, and trusted by the kids of PS118 that there was virtually no secret kept safe from her ears. People came to her as a natural course when they had something dreadful to hide.

It was what made it a natural fit when she took the job from the previous owner. She had appreciated the subtle, hands-off approach he had taken before her, spreading fun rumors and tall tales to excite his friends in secret.

She had other uses for the role.

At first, it was just something to keep her busy when Arnold left. She found that she missed the constant attention and friendship from the sweet boy more than she had anticipated or expected. A vacuum of kindness made itself present in her heart, and over many months this vacancy became a bitterness she could not articulate. It troubled Lila when she would feel angry with the people of PS118 for moving along as if their lives weren't noticeably worse without him around. It was a disturbing realization that she felt jealous of the time they had with him before he left and had suddenly seemed to take for granted. It felt vulgar to her preteen heart that such a wonderful boy could vanish from their lives and nobody seemed to _notice._

This wasn't the full truth, however. She knew that now, as an adult. Regrets piled in her uselessly, and Lila never had time for old discarded dirty laundry. Her past was imperfect. She was cruel, when things began to overwhelm her. She shocked herself with her ability to attack. The pieces of herself that floated in a sea of frustration had coalesced by the time she was fourteen into a secretly vicious huntress. Weaknesses and fault in her friends were punished immediately with exposure. Guilt for what she was doing was outweighed by the outrage that they tried to escape the costs of their behaviors.

Everything changed when she "lost" her little book. Truthfully, it was just _one _of two redundant copies she kept in secret ciphers, two books catalogued and carefully maintained with every secret and ugly mistake of everyone she knew. If Arnold wasn't around to keep people in check with his kindness, Lila would use her kindness as a weapon to humiliate them into obedient deference to the best qualities within them her Arnold continuously had sought to draw out.

It was not a difficult transformation for her. Before her arrival at Hillwood, the cheery and sunny girl they all knew as Lila barely existed as anything except an idea. A notion that she could-_should-_start fresh with a less antagonistic existence in her new home. The farm community she left behind lost itself a gossiping, teasing, sometimes simply too-honest girl with a wide grin and knowing eyes; Hillwood earned itself the kind, patient, ever positive sun-dappled young lady with simply folded hands and a demure smile. It was a necessary change, and Arnold's unwelcome initial attentions the only wrinkle in her otherwise well executed, and indeed sincerely meant, transmutation into the Lila Sawyer PS118 knew.

Her slow reversal back to that unhappy child, an only child lonely on a large farm, too smart, too clever, too hungry for more outside the boundaries her upbringing gave her was so insidiously gradual that by the time she was running from Phoebe and Gerald it was too late. She had to stay a step ahead of them, at any cost, let everything fall apart. The only remorse inside her for the ugly things she revealed as Fuzzy Slippers to get in their way was that they had been clever enough to get close to the real answer.

"Losing" one of the copies of her book of secrets was a way out.

Once Gerald and Phoebe believed they had inflicted a mortal psychological wound on Fuzzy Slippers by getting the book, their pursuit ended so long as she kept her temptation to attack in check.

The decision to move back to her farm was posited by her father once their family finances had been finally put back in order. She had no hesitation in her saddened heart when she agreed. Hillwood was a skeleton of something to her by then. A pitiable reminder of her at her most powerful, savage and beautiful and secretly moving everything, but also of the absent feeling in her heart when she observed the friends she had come to resent together, enjoying each other's company.

Arnold was the only one she had never found fault with, and who defied even her careful scrutiny for something to disappoint her silent judgements. In his letters he waned between the admiration of the romance of adventure, to profound political declarations and sincere vows to change whatever he could with his young and not yet matured powers. He spoke to her frankly, confessing more than once his latent feelings for her, and for Helga, the confusion he felt when he wrote to her on the topic, and his hopeless hurt that Helga never saw fit to write him back. She genuinely fell in love with him, despite herself, wooed by words more wonderful than every clumsy romantic gesture he had ever attempted as children, made less hateful of herself and the memories she stacked in the attic of her heart.

She genuinely treasured him, every moment with him, and the fact she was now nearly blind drunk because he hurt her, wheeling herself to bed because of an injury she sustained on his behalf invigorated in her wounded spirit that long abandoned weaponized bitterness she incubated as a teen.

Helga had been a miscalculation. Lila had an embarrassingly large blind spot in regards to Arnold; the fact that she had wagered her shared history with Arnold, and indeed the honesty of her love, the only honest thing she had left in her, and lost the bet soured whatever genuine kindness she had gleaned from her tender affections for her former fiancée.

As she set her head, which spun with the wild and dizzying intoxication of a truly heroic amount of Bourbon for her, down on her pillow, hoisting herself up into her bed by her guidance rails, Lila swore that she would either find Arnold back in her heart and keep him there, or else destroy everything she could in Hillwood, brick by brick.

As darkness took her swirling consciousness, a lone troubling thought attempted to find purchase against the blackness of a drunken stupor. Her eyes struggled to flutter open as the idea struck her, fearfully, but Orpheus sang her sad heart to sleep before it could weave itself in the over worked tapestry of her memory.

_I can't lose as long as Brainy stays out of it, _she thought, and immediately forgot as she fell asleep.

* * *

Arnold was awake long before Phoebe and Gerald arrived at the boardinghouse. Sleep was elusive for him, coming in short bursts punctuated by the all-too-real dreams that felt more like memories of Helga, close to him, entwined, in his bed, in his mouth and heart. Arnold dressed himself in a simple peach colored tank top and jeans, walking barefoot in the cool pre-dawn quiet of the kitchen. Since it was a Saturday, most of the boarders would sleep in until they smelled some sort of breakfast cooking.

A pot of coffee, cheap and strong, was gurgling itself to life on the counter while Arnold considered his day.

He'd have to call Lila. He'd made a promise to talk to her after the party, and he kept his word. He wasn't looking forward to the conversation, imagining the soft disappointment in her voice when he recounted the explosive events of the night before.

Realistically, Arnold did not really believe he deserved either of the girls in his life. To Lila, he owed a lifetime of apologies for offering himself up to her when he didn't sincerely have himself to give away. To Helga, he owed a lifetime of apologies for letting his heart tarry too far and only recently come home, despite that always her heart was married deep to his own.

He felt too large in the kitchen, having to stoop under hanging pots and pans and bumping into the space which seemed far smaller than he remembered.

He poured himself a cup of coffee and drank it quietly until his friends arrived.

He found them too energetic and excitable for the circumstances. He knew they meant well, and he loved them dearly for their devotion in helping him settle the situation, but he also found their involvement slightly invasive. He'd lived virtually alone, relying only on himself and his parents, for over half his life now, and even though he grew up leaning on his friends and glowing in their company, the subtle differences of a multitude of isolations grew a love for solitude inside him. And so, even though he was grateful for their presence, and gladdened to be with them again, he privately, silently chafed under the over-abundant attentions so well intended.

Phoebe, always sensitive and observant, noticed the distance in his voice and the hesitance in his gaze, and quickly wrapped up their planning and discussion. Arnold would join Phoebe and Gerald and Helga at the beach house in four days, a Wednesday, and they would stay there until the following Monday. Helga's summer classes ended Tuesday, giving them the perfect window of opportunity to go have some fun together. Gerald was all smiles and suggestions about romantic interludes alone with Helga, and Phoebe, for her part, suggested that Arnold simply try to have a good time. He appreciated both sentiments, but wondered if anything other than an awkward weekend would ever come of this plan.

His friends left him to spend time alone not long after. Perhaps called by the earthy smell of coffee, Phil stalked long-legged and stiff into the kitchen not long after.

"Morning, Shortman." He moved automatically to the coffee pot, pouring himself a large cup. "Thanks for the pot, Arnold. I know this stuff's garbage, but it keeps you regular! The trains run on the schedule this stuff sets, heh."

Phil's eyes landed on Arnold's swollen, bruised cheek.

"Quite the shiner you got there. A gift from your little friend with the eyebrows?"

Arnold looked up at Phil. "How did you know?"

Phil grinned over the cup of coffee he brought to his lips, sipping it loudly. "The whole boarding house heard you two making quite the ruckus. I'd be surprised if the neighborhood watch didn't notice. Quite a mouth on that Pataki girl."

Arnold blushed at the memory of exactly what her mouth was capable of. He felt apart from his body, awkward and larger in himself than his spacial awareness told him he should occupy.

"Sorry about that, I know Helga can be a little...expressive."

"You got that right," Phil chuckled, swinging into a seat opposite his grandson. "So, why'd she sock ya? Lover's quarrel?"

"Basically. I messed up pretty bad, grandpa. Bad enough that I have two women mad at me."

Phil's eyes widened, then creased at the crows feet in a knowing smile. "Well well well, my grandson, the casanova. What a lady killer! Two women, eh?"

"Yeah, I mean, you remember Lila."

"The sweet cripple girl with freckles."

"Right, Lila, well, she and I sort of got engaged not long after the accident. And well," Arnold trailed off, hearing the absurdity of his situation as he spoke it. Phil rubbed at his dimpled, scruffy chin, fingers caressing the cleft thoughtfully.

"And so you two-timed her with the eyebrow girl? Arnold, that doesn't sound like you."

"No, it's not, and I didn't. I broke it off with Lila, because I knew things were complicated with Helga, and I didn't know what would happen while I was here. I couldn't be dishonest with either of them."

"And by 'couldn't be dishonest' means you told Pataki about being prematurely engaged and whatnot, and she clocked you a good one."

"Right." Arnold was relieved to be talking to his grandfather about this one. He might be 91, but Steely Phil was still the wisest, most clever person Arnold knew.

"Sounds like you deserved it!" Arnold's eyes widened in surprise. Phil smiled adoringly at his grandson, putting his cup of coffee down and slowly standing up, leaning heavily against his cane. "Some life lessons can only be learned the hard way, Shortman. The lesson you learned is that you can't have your cake and eat it too! Whatever you dumped pretty little miss Sawyer for, and whatever compelled you to pick up with that hellion Pataki, you were being honest with yourself. What got you _into_ this mess was the opposite. So just stick to your guns, Arnold. You got a good heart, and it generally won't steer you wrong."

"Yeah, but, Grandpa, listening to my heart is what got me into this mess to begin with."

"I didn't mean all the time! You also gotta know when to shut it up! Don't always _only_ listen to your heart, Arnold, your heart is stupid! You're liable to elope with Pataki if you do that."

"Grandpa, you're not making any sense. How am I supposed to stick to my guns but not listen to my heart?"

Phil shrugged his shoulders, walking out of the kitchen with a bit of hustle. "You got me, kiddo, but that's what you gotta do. Now excuse me, general arabica's upset the natives and there's an uprising brewing below the equator."

Arnold smiled despite himself at his grandpa's creative euphemisms, and chewed on what his grandfather advised him. Somehow he needed to make up his mistakes to both Helga and Lila, while still staying true to his values and not letting his heart override his instincts. He wasn't sure what sort of gesture he could make that could accomplish that.

He decided to leave the building for a little while, before the rest of the tenants arrived and really made his day interesting. A walk through the neighborhood would do him good, he reasoned, and get his mind moving forward. Slipping on some shoes, he left the boarding house into the muggy late summer morning, walking briskly towards nothing in particular.

The neighborhood had changed, of course. Almost all the landmarks of his childhood were gone. He moved randomly through the streets, crossing when he felt like it, and turning down alleys when the shade looked inviting. Somehow this brownian course took him through there required turns to bring him to Gerald field.

It was still a field, he was surprised to see, although now it was a proper field made up to hold an actual baseball game. He approached the chainlink fence encircling it, leaning against the rough aluminum and steel and remembering all the hassle he and his friends went through to clear this little section of space out. All the games they played here, all the adventures and tribulations he and his friends shared. Nostalgia, huge and sticky on his mind, overwhelmed his heart, and made him miss his friends with a sudden sweet melancholy.

His eyes fell on home plate, and he recalled the ghostly image of Helga in her pink dress, squatting behind it to call his pitches. She was an amazing catcher, always able to pull out his best pitch every throw. They were natural partners on the field. It just felt right to throw his fastball into her mitt back then. Now he knew why, of course, but back then it was a puzzling, confusing feeling that made him giddy and excited to play a game of baseball with her, but made him feel awkward and strange afterwards.

How long had he been in love with Helga, without realizing it?

Arnold looked at home plate again, getting an idea. Maybe there wasn't a way he could verbally apologize to Helga. Maybe the only way he could communicate his regret was through action. Maybe what Helga needed to see was his own version of her band's performance, a dramatic and visually and emotionally arresting confession of the soul.

While Arnold didn't have the musical talent to put on a show for her, and he was no poet, he _did_ know one way he could wordlessly communicate with her. Smiling to himself, he turned to briskly walk back home. He was immensely grateful that he had opted to bring his gear with him for his visit. It wasn't a _foolproof _plan, but it was the best idea he'd had yet.

Arnold Shortman set out to right the wrongs he had committed, more sure of himself than he had been in years.

* * *

Standing on the stoop of Helga and Brainy's apartment building, Phoebe inventoried the braveries she had found in herself over the years as Helga's best friend, girding herself with this emotional steel to prepare against Helga. Both experience and tangible evidence showed her that the events transpired in the past 24 hours were less than ideal, and had exacted a significant pain toll on her dear friend. What riddled chaos she unleashed in knee-jerk defense against this awful life, Phoebe had no way of knowing, but all her time at Helga's side told her that there would be collateral damage.

She was buzzed in by someone after she used the intercom to announce herself, stepping into the building tentatively. The stairs to their second floor apartment never seemed to intimidatingly long and tall as they did now. Phoebe was no coward, but there was painful uncertainty ahead, and someone raw and hurt that she loved very much, and the fear that quivered in her belly was a natural consequence she accepted. Her acceptance was bravery, at least that was what she told herself.

At the door, she calmed herself with a silent little prayer. Her dainty hand lifted, rapping the wooden frame with gentle urgency.

Briany swung the door open, his mouth swollen, looking tired. He leaned against the door frame in the thresholds, peering at her from over his glasses.

"Good morning, Brian. I hope I'm not interrupting anything urgent, but I was hoping I could see and speak with Helga. I'm sure you've heard what happened. I thought she might want some support."

Brian nodded once, but was unmoved from his position guarding the entry.

"If you like, I can come back later?" Phoebe was unsure why Brainy was acting so protective, but the change in his usual quiet, flexible demeanor gave her pause. "If this is an inconvenient time to approach her, that is. She's not answering my calls, so I am assuming she is still asleep, but…" she paused, peering at the wreck and devastation behind Brainy. "Maybe I can help clean up a little while you lay down?"

Brian stepped aside, and Phoebe hopped in quickly, worried he would change his mind. She looked around the room quickly, not making a big production of the movement. She did not want to make it seem like she was over concerned about the mess, even if it was distressing.

All the pots and pans in the kitchen were scattered across the living room floor, which was half buried under the tall, overturned shelves that had held their collective record collection, that same precious burden cascaded out in a dramatic parabola over everything. The couch was upended, flipped and leaning against the wall on its narrow side, all the cushions tipped out of it awkwardly. Circling the shattered glass porch door, the two small end tables that had sat on either side of the couch, tipped over and under a hole in the opposite wall that had most likely been punched by one of the said tables in flight. Such devastation scattered itself through the entire visible area of the department, and everything smelled like bleach and blood. An alarming splatter and smear of blood caught her eye, and she followed fat drops in the dirty carpet down the hall to Helga's room.

Phoebe looked up at Brainy, who stood looking at the apartment with her quietly. When he noticed her look in his direction, he sighed and walked towards the porch with a broom he picked up from its spot leaning on the wall. She wordlessly watched him sweep up glass, unsure what to say or do, grasping for some verse or verbs of comfort she might offer in this catastrophic wake.

Instead, she just got to work in the kitchen, picking up plates and dishes that were unbroken and stacking them neatly.

_It might be worse than we thought_, she fearfully pondered, full of dread. That bloodstain worried her. It didn't appear as vexingly large as would necessitate her immediate medical concern, and she was doubtless that Brian would immediately inform her if some unspeakable harm had come to Helga. And yet, seeing the private violence her friend inflicted instilled nothing but doubts into Phoebe.

_Maybe it is best to reconsider our current course. A reconciliation could very well be an impossibility at this juncture. _Phoebe was realistic, and forced to confront the sobering reality of this situation hands on.

A door opened down the hall and Helga, hair pure silvery white in a shocking change, staggered bleary-eyed into the living room. She didn't seem to notice Phoebe crouched in the kitchen, and walked directly to Brainy.

"Brian, look, I just wanted to apologize again," she started, and Brian held up a finger to her lips to try to shush her. "No, let me finish. I'm really, _really_ sorry, I don't know what came over me, well, actually, I do, and it's this terrible side of me that I just can't really seem to control and I am working on getting it under control with Dr. Bliss but I'm still making mistakes and I really hurt you, and I'm sorry. I didn't want to get you involved in this mess, and I really crossed the line. I'm sorry I...I'm sorry I bit you."

Phoebe's eyes went a little wide. _She __bit__ him? Where? _Phoebe tried to recollect her visual inspection of Brian the moment the door was opened, and the only thing out of place was a swollen mouth. No external bruising or marks. _Inside his mouth? His tongue? She bit his tongue?_ She crouched, motionless, trying to comprehend this, when she saw Helga's bare feet step into vision inches away from her. She slowly looked up at an angry, trembling Helga, fists clenched in angry white balls at her hips.

"Hello, _Phoebe._" Her voice carried the promise of a threat.

"H-Hello, Helga, I was just helping Brian clean up a little, I didn't mean to listen in to your conversation," she hastily rattled off, standing nervously and setting the plates she had collected on the kitchen counter. "I'll just go, you sound like you have to talk-"

Helga's hand slapped onto the wall, blocking Phoebe's exit through the kitchen.

"Oh no, I don't think that'll be necessary, Pheebs. Stay a bit. _Let's chew the fat_, old chum."

Phoebe felt very small, and very threatened. "H-Helga, I think it's imperative that you stay calm."

"Oh, I'm perfectly calm, Phoebe. This is me being perfectly calm. Last night? All of _this?_ That was me, _not_ being calm. Do you know _why_ I wasn't calm last night? Care to venture a guess?"

"B-Because of what Arnold told you about Lila?" Phoebe was too nervous to try to uphold any level of subterfuge. The truth came spilling out of her.

"Because of what Arnold told me about Lila. Very good, Phoebe. What a sleuth. What a Holmes. Always just so clever, Phoebe, and that's the problem."

"Problem?" Phoebe's voice was quiet, a squeak out of her throat.

"Oh yes, a big problem. See, the _worst_ part about hearing that little _thing_ about Lila last night was that I heard it from _him._ When my _best friend_ knew this unhappy little _thing_ the whole time, and never told me. I could have been saved a _lot_ of undue embarrassment and psychological trauma if I'd had just a _teensy_ heads up. Instead, I stagger blindly into a bedroom with the love of my life and _stupidly_ sleep with him. Six times. In a row. And what happens then?"

Phoebe didn't answer her, simply too nervous to offer anything other than a slight shrug of her thin shoulders.

"I'll tell you what happened, Phoebe." Helga was smiling threateningly, her face a mask of calm despite her body's gently quaking tremulous fury.

Suddenly, Helga slammed her fist against the wall, startling Phoebe. She closed her eyes, putting her hands in front of her expecting a hit.

None came, and she opened her eyes slowly, to see Helga slumped on her knees, a pained expression on her tired face.

"_EVERYTHING WAS RUINED!_"

Helga's shriek punctuated the silence between the three friends. Phoebe slowly lowered herself down, crouching next to Helga, heart a tumult and desperate to offer some solace or comforting words, but unable to find the strength or significance to make the difficult effort.

"And now, now I have to find some way to face him after I hit him. Now I have to figure out what the fuck kind of apology you say for that. I _hit_ him, Phoebe. I punched him as hard as I could, right in the face. I have _no_ idea how I'm supposed to recover from that, and get his forgiveness, or even talk to him again. And even that might not be possible, because, hell, I'm a fucking unstable psychotic bitch, and the second I see his stupid face I'm likely to remember the fact that he _was engaged to someone I hate more than almost anything_, and lose my shit all over him again! I'm fucked, Phoebe! I'm fucked!"

Helga looked her friend dead in the eyes.

"And you could have helped. And you _didn't."_

Phoebe felt her eyes grow hot and wet, the terrible accusation a deadly force to her heart. The guilt of her ceaseless plotting, the careful manipulation, and the sneaking around had been threatening to overwhelm her ever since they started. She had her reasons, and she had even convinced herself and her friends they were good ones. But now, she was full of doubt, and re-thinking her every step.

She finally found her voice, speaking calmly and quietly. "How can I help you now?"

Helga sighed, her whole body lifting and falling with the release of the emotions inside her.

"I don't know. Stop lying to me. Don't hide things from me. How can I trust you anymore?"

"Helga, I'm deeply sorry for the grievous wounds my actions may have inflicted. I am truly, sincerely sorry, but I swear I thought I was acting in your best interests."

A fierce snarl crooked on Helga's face suddenly. "How?" She shot back.

"Well, Arnold was coming back to Hillwood to reconcile with you. You never would have let that happen if you knew. You would have closed him off, and shut that door forever. You would have done everything you could to avoid seeing him, and then Arnold would have left Hillwood forever, and got married to LIla. At least _this_ way, you got to be with him for a little while. And he broke up with Lila right before the party. So he clearly has feelings for you still. Strong ones. Feelings strong enough to end a significant relationship to a woman he owes a life debt to. I may have been sneaky, and mislead you, and got all our friends to help, but, Helga, the plan _worked._ Arnold's not engaged anymore, and he spent the night with _you_ and not Lila. The future is uncertain now, and we don't know what is going to happen. None of that would be true if I had told you he was engaged."

Helga's face was unreadable to Phoebe, a strange mask of an impassive threat.

"Helga, what I am attempting to communicate is that it was difficult, no, painful for me to keep this from you, but I had to for you to have any chance. I had to work against my own conscience as your best friend, and my own instincts as a woman, and my own values as a person. And," Phoebe dared to reveal even more to Helga, gambling that one last tidbit might be enough to smoothe out her rancor. "Lila had a hand in this, too."

Helga's eyes narrowed, and Phoebe could see her face start to redden. _Divert divert divert!_

"What I mean is!"

"What you mean is you and Lila were in cahoots! Is that it?!"

"No, no, I mean, well, Lila _did_ know about the plan. But I had to tell her at least _parts_ of the plan to insure her non-interference. I wanted a clean slate for you two to reconcile. I gambled that her good and trusting nature would compel her to consent to the plan, and I was right."

"She _consented_? Like hell she did. Lila Sawyer has lived her entire life with Arnold around her pretty little finger and there's no way in any kind of _Hell_ she would give that up."

"No, Helga, she did. In fact, she made Gerald and I swear to do our best to get Arnold to stay. She had this particularly altruistic notion that if she released Arnold to his own devices, and he returned to her of his own free will, she could marry him doubt free. _She _gambled as well. And she lost. We won."

Helga stood up, swiping her knees clean. Phoebe looked up at her friend over her glasses, pressing on.

"Arnold could have told you when he ran into you at the coffee shop but opted to remain mum on the topic. That wasn't a mistake. He wasn't sure how he felt about returning _or_ by seeing you again. You threw his heart into disarray, and I wanted to give you the weapons you needed to seal the deal. I'm sorry, Helga. I am deeply, sincerely apologetic for manipulating you in this abhorrent manner. But I couldn't do _nothing_ and watch you two drift apart forever. I love you too much to watch that happen."

Helga didn't say anything at first. Phoebe watched her walk away, then come back, her face a rictus of anger, then melt away into confusion as she paced away. She turned suddenly, holding a finger up, clearly prepared for some internal rebuttal, but stopped short of saying anything and just sighed the words away into the air. Finally, Helga stepped towards her friend, and extended her hand to Phoebe.

"Come on, get off the dirty floor, Pheebs." She sounded tired. Phoebe slipped her small hand into Helga's, and Helga lifted her up onto her feet. Then, she spoke. "I get it. I do. Really, I've done much worse myself. And I'm a little proud of you, in a way. This is a real Helga Pataki kind of power play. I never expected it out of you."

Helga's face was a fond smile. Her grip tightened a little bit, and her face became serious.

"But if you _ever_ lie to me again, it's gonna get ugly."

"Truthing." Phoebe smiled nervously at her friend, attempting to dispel the tension.

A knock at the door changed the tone in an instant. Helga, Brian, and Phoebe whipped their heads around, staring at the front door.

Brian and Phoebe locked eyes for a second, and then both stared at Helga. It had to be Arnold. Who else could it be?

Helga shook her head once, and started for the door.

"Helga wait," Phoebe tried to think of a way to delay this moment. Anything!

"Sorry, Pheebs, if it's him, my forehead's got a date with the floor. I've got some _mea culpas_ ahead of me."

Phoebe bit her lip, nodding in agreement. All she could do was watch, now.

Helga opened the door enough that Phoebe could see Arnold's face. A wine colored bruise swelled on his left cheek, an inch below the eye. Phoebe winced at the sight of it.

"Hi, Helga."

"Hello, Arnold." Phoebe thought that Helga's voice was terribly quiet. Her heart bled for the courage of her friend.

"Can I come in?"

"I'd advise against that."

"Alright. Can you come out then?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well, do you think you could find out, and meet me in Gerald Field?"

"W-why would I meet you there?"

"Bring your catcher's gear. You still have it right?" Phoebe was immediately confused. _What is Arnold planning?_

"Yeah, I have it here...why would I bring my gear? What's your angle, Arnold?"

"No angle. I just wanna talk. With a good bit of distance between us." _Smart. _Phoebe appreciated the elegance of his suggestion.

Helga looked back at Phoebe, her face worried. She seemed to search Phoebe's eyes for an answer. Phoebe nodded once. _Do it. Go with him._

Helga sighed and turned back to Arnold. "Yeah okay fine. I'll go play catch with you, Football Head. Just give me some time. I haven't eaten anything yet and I gotta get dressed."

"Skip breakfast. Come in what you're wearing." Arnold seemed oddly insistent. Pushy, even. _What is he angling at? Why do this when Helga is hungry and uncomfortable?_

"Really, Arnold? You want me to skip breakfast, _the most important meal of the day_, so I can go play catch with you in Gerald Field. In my shorts and tank top."

"Yes," he nodded. "Please."

Phoebe cheered for her friend internally when Helga finally agreed. "Okay, okay, you win, Football Head. Stay there. I'll walk with you."

Helga closed the door and walked into the room, covering her eyes with a hand. "Why did I agree to do this again?"

Phoebe chimed in. "Because he's the man you love and this is your chance to apologize in private?"

"Oh yeah. Right. I hate that."

Helga sighed and disappeared into her room. She came out, a pair of dirty pink cleats on her feet and her silvery white hair in a ponytail peaking out from under the brim of a backwards baseball cap, also pink. She carried a white duffel bag, in which Phoebe imagined all her catcher's gear was stowed.

"Alright. I'm off. Wish me luck. Oh, and Phoebe?"

"Yes, Helga?"

"Don't leave until the apartment is clean." Helga shut the door behind her, disappearing from the apartment and off into her future with Arnold.

"Cleaning," Phoebe smiled to herself, and moved to help Brian with the cleaning.


	11. Chapter 11 - Hard to Love

A/N: We start with a little moment from our favorite couple's past. Don't be alarmed if you start this chapter and think you're in the wrong fic! Heads up, I will probably be a bit longer between updates than a week, which is my typical time between new chapters. This chapter represents kind of a second climax, and hopefully, will bridge us to the next part.

I just gotta figure out what the next part will look like!

Please keep your comments coming, and always feel free to reach out to me for suggestions and feedback.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 11: Everybody is a Little Hard to Love Sometimes

"What did it avail to pray when he knew his soul lusted after its own destruction?" - James Joyce

* * *

"Come on, _Arnoldo_, get your football shaped head in the game!" Helga scowled, pushing the ball into his glove with snarl. "If Wolfgang and the sixth graders beat us Betsy and I are going to _personally_ hold you accountable."

Arnold adjusted his blue cap on his head, wiping the sweat from his brow. He didn't know why he was pitching so terribly, normally the sixth graders were a simple sweep for his fastball. "I'm trying the best I can, Helga." The heat and exhaustion piled up on his nerves gave his voice edge.

Helga didn't seem impressed. "What?! I know for a _fact_ this isn't your best! Your shoulder is stiff, and you're releasing too early. You're all tense, and it's screwed up your sorry excuse for a fastball. These chumps ought to be easy pickings for you."

Helga was right. His pitching was thrown off. The sixth graders had them on the ropes, down 6-7 in the sixth inning. He had to stop their offensive drive if they were to have any hope of winning. He just couldn't get his head in the game. The disappointment he felt in himself made him imagine that the rest of the team felt far worse. He set his jaw, uncharacteristically serious.

Helga softened her expression slightly, her face sweaty under her catcher's mask. "Look, Arnold, just relax. We've thrown a billion fastballs in the bullpen that would light these suckers on fire. Aren't you into Zen and stuff?"

Arnold was too tired to be suspicious that Helga knew that he dabbled in Eastern religions. "Yeah."

"Just try to look at each throw as being the natural path the ball takes, no more, no less. Your arm will do the rest."

He was startled that she could make such a suggestion. It was out of character for the typically hellacious Helga. "How do you know that stuff, Helga?" He squinted at her, suspicion now strong enough to overcome exhaustion.

"I _read_ ya know! W-whatever, just take the stupid advice or don't. I don't care how you do it, just strike this big idiot out or I'll pound you into next week!" She stormed off, squatting behind the plate with a scowl Arnold couldn't totally believe was anger.

Arnold regarded the dirty, old ball in his glove. He heard his friends shouting support, offering encouragement for their pitcher, hoping he had the arm still left in him to finish this.

"It'll be alright man," he heard Gerald shout from first base. "Just focus, we got this game in the bag."

He wasn't so sure he shared his best friend's optimism.

Arnold took the ball in his right hand and squeezed it with his fingers, feeling the slight give of the pliant projectile, savoring the feel between his fingers and palm. Taking a steadying breath, he stared down the line at Helga's hand, holding her glove above the plate with an expectant, impatient glare.

Was that the stare of the catcher who wanted to win this game, or the girl who was waiting for him to reply to her feelings?

This celebratory game at Gerald field between the fourth and sixth graders came on the jubilant heels of vanquishing FTi and saving the whole neighborhood. An adventure as wild and unexpected as any he'd ever been on, and the climax of that excitement was the awkward, frightening, confusing confrontation on that fateful building rooftop with Helga. Only a week had passed. Arnold's mouth still remembered that kiss.

He felt confused and stymied by his youth, wise and intelligent enough to know he was still too young to fully understand and grapple with the swirling emotions building momentum within him. He lacked the experience to tell him that what he was feeling was the stirrings of a powerful affection, built over years of fondness and patience, growing and maturing into a terrifying young love. All he knew was that when he looked at Helga, he felt frightened, not of the promise of bullying or violence she threatened him with constantly, but of the strange, complicated fluttering in his gut just below the heart and above his belly.

They practiced for this game together for an entire day at the start of the week. Helga and Arnold must have thrown a thousand balls, working to fix what Helga called his "half-cocked fastball." After every throw, she had a nasty comment or unhelpful insult to offer, even if she paired it with the rare jewel of legitimate advice. And by the end of the day, his fingertips were blistered, his shoulder ached, and his pitch had never seen such good form. He'd never spent that much time with her, he'd never had a reason to, and the prolonged proximity of her, the presence of her personality loomed so large over his awareness that it left him shaken. For the first time, he was physically aware of her in his life, and it scrambled his normally calm demeanor. It jangled him internally so severely, he avoided her the rest of the entire week. Anticipation to see her again built in him subtly, sliding into the chambers of his heart in almost imperceptible ways, until the day of the big celebration game arrived and he was a tangled mess of nerves.

Arnold couldn't bear to tell Helga that the reason he kept throwing wild pitches was because he kept making eye contact with her, and it set his heart to such a furious cadence that it made him dizzy, out of breath, and excited. It was different than the way he felt about Lila Sawyer, who wildly cheered his name from the side of Gerald field. With Lila it was uncomplicated, simple, pretty. She was extremely delicate, sweet, and trustworthy, and basically in every way Helga's polar opposite. He could tell Lila anything he was thinking or feeling, and when he was around her he got excited and calm at all once. Surely, that was the real deal. Surely, that had to be what poets and singers called 'love.'

Except now, when he began twisting his body and coiling the spring of his shoulder to launch his fastball at the leering, grinning sixth grader at bat, he made the slightest of eye contact with Helga again, eye to eye for the briefest of instants, and his whole body shuddered and shook out of alignment, and the ball went wild for the fourth time.

"God _DAMMIT,_ Arnold!" Helga shocked him with the force of her cursing. He'd never heard her use that kind of language, but he still felt guilty for forcing it out of her as she scrambled to get the ball that flew past her and throw it to third. It came a fraction of an instant too late, and the runner from second stole his base. Arnold wilted under the jeering and taunts of the sixth graders, and could feel the confused, disappointed stares from his friends on the flat of his small back.

"TIME!" Helga shouted for the second time this inning, ripping off her face guard and striding to the mound.

Wolfgang walked up to the plate, smirking as he swung his bat in one hand at his side. "You gonna call time out every time he walks one of us, Pataki?"

"Shut up, Wolfgang," she barked over her shoulder. Arnold dreaded a second up close confrontation, because he didn't have any answers for her why he was acting so strange. None he could express to her right now anyway.

"Arnold, we need to change gears," she sighed with frustration, surprising him with her patience. No shouting or name calling, just a frank assessment of the situation and her suggested course of action. It felt bizarre, out of character, and yet oddly familiar. "Do you remember the pitch we worked on the other day?"

Arnold squeezed his hand on the ball he had in his glove in nervous reflex. "No, Helga, I can't throw that!"

"Yes you can, Arnold. The advice I just gave you? About how you should think of the throw as a Zen thing or whatever? That was good advice, just for the wrong kind of pitch. You don't have the ball control to pitch your rising fastball right now. You're too tense, for whatever stupid reason."

Arnold didn't offer any insights on that subject. "Helga, I have even _less_ control of that pitch. If we threw it 200 times the other day, you probably only caught it 20 times!"

Helga slid her hand into Arnold's glove where his other hand gripped the baseball. She stepped closer, separated by inches rather than feet. Her fingers laced over his on the ball, squeezing.

"Arnold, this ball is _all about _letting go. It's about trust. That's what I was trying to show you. A pitch like this doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, it's pretty much gotta be full of flaws to work right. And these idiot sixth graders have _never_ seen anything like it. You'll strike every one of these lanky, poorly-coordinated, glandularly-overwhelmed _dunces _out, no problem."

His fingers were very aware of her hand on his, the intimate contact in the walls of his glove so private, so tender, he was shaken to silence. He'd never been this close to a girl before. His mind was an awful blank and a riot all at once.

"Arnold, I'm your catcher," she started, catching his eyes with her clear blue gaze. Her voice became softer, quieter. "I'll catch anything you throw, you just have to trust me. I'll _always_ catch your pitch. I swear."

The two preteens stared at each other, somewhat oblivious to the stares of their friends and otherwise as they intimately communicated on the pitcher's mound. Helga's cheeks began to pink, then redden as they lingered.

"Okay. I'll throw it." The decision was easier to make when she reassured him so kindly. It was pleasant, and unexpected.

"Of course you will, because I _told_ you to," she started, stepping away with an awkward glance at the stands. Arnold looked out where she glanced, seeing Lila watching them, intently. The look was one he'd never seen on her face, a look of intense, maybe even hostile concentration. Helga stepped into his field of view, grabbing his attention again. "Just wait for my sign. We can't throw it every time, because it's an easy hit if you figure out the trick. We gotta corner Wolfgang first, then let it go. Think you can get at least two pitches over the plate, Football Head?"

Arnold kicked the toe of his shoe on the plate, nodding. "I can do it. This helped a lot. You know, Helga, I really like when you're nicer to me like this."

"Wh-what do you m-mean, Football Head?" She pulled her mask back on, stepping further away. "I'm not being _nice,_ I'm trying to win this _game."_

"Maybe so, but you're going about it without yelling at me or calling me nasty names. It's nice. It's loosened me up." Arnold got wise to her hesitation, getting an idea. "It's the sign of a good catcher."

"Y-yeah, well, I'm the best catcher in Hillwood. You're just lucky to have me," she stormed off to home plate, signaling the game to continue. Arnold watched her squat at the plate, staring more intensely at him than before. Somehow, however, he was less thrown apart by that smoldering stare, and found himself drawn in. Fascinated. _Curious_. Somewhere in the silence of her stare, there was a dramatic truth. He wanted to see inside that shell of surly insults, and get a better look at what was inside. If it was anything like what he saw on that roof, or like the insightful and caring advice he just got from his catcher, he wanted to see a lot more.

"Everything alright, man?" Gerald called to Arnold, sounding curious and confused, obviously thrown off by what he just watched.

"Yeah, Gerald." Arnold steadied himself with a breath and took his stance. "Everything's fine."

"PLAY BALL!" Helga roared, and slapped her mitt with gusto. Wolfgang swayed his bat over his shoulder, sneering over the drive at Arnold. Helga's hand flashed her index finger, then lifted her thumb. An outside rising fastball, meant to draw Wolfgang into swinging and maybe tipping the ball into a foul.

Arnold wound his body up, kicking his leg up to coil the momentum of his pitch around his hips. Twisting, his arm swung around, snapping sharply and releasing in the exact center of the parabola of his throw.

The ball roared over the far side of the plate from Wolfgang, arcing up at the last minute towards Helga's glove. Wolfgang's swing was already mostly done when the ball slid past it, a narrow miss. Arnold grinned, meeting Helga's grin in return.

"Strike!" Arnold's grandpa called from behind Helga. He had volunteered to officiate their celebration game, eager to join his grandson in the game.

_He only swung at that because of Helga's timeout, he was impatient. That was a ball, he won't swing at that again._ Arnold caught the returned ball from Helga, and tried to keep his mind clear. He was still throwing wide, every time he looked at Helga. Trying to focus all his attention on his posture, his form, and the strength of his arm kept his awareness sharpened, so that when he locked eyes with his catcher, his hand released the ball wild. By the narrowing of Wolfgang's eyes, Arnold could see that the bigger bully wouldn't swing early for him again.

_Just wait for Helga's call_, he tried to reason with himself. Her fingers flashed the same call, the rising fastball to the outside. _She's nuts_, he grumbled internally, but wound himself up just the same.

The ball shot down the line at nearly 90 miles per hour, blisteringly fast for the pitch of a nine year old.. The pitch went wild a second time, this time bending inwards towards Wolfgang. He swung, the bat hitting the fastball nearly six inches below the sweet spot, sending it far afield and into the wall along the bleachers.

"Foul!" Phil called, handing Helga a fresh ball.

She grinned, tossing Arnold his new ball, squatting down into place with victory in her eyes.

_We've got him cornered. She's going to call it._

Helga's hand flashed her index finger, lifting her thumb up at a 90 degree angle. Arnold was confused for half a second, because that was the call for his fastball. But a moment later, her pinky extended.

_The knuckleball._

Arnold stared at her hand, recognizing the shape somehow. It was familiar, calling up a memory in him. Not long ago, he recalled, his class got a primer in American Sign Language, Mr. Simmons eager to "expand their horizons in communication." Being Mr. Simmons, the very first sign he taught the whole class was this exact sign. _What did it mean?_ Arnold struggled to remember, as he stood pensively on the plate.

_I love you._

Now he remembered. Although the hand was turned in the other direction when it was used for sign language, the same configuration sat at Helga's waistline, communicating with Arnold in secret.

He found it funny. Rather than excite him into a spiral out of control, the little playful message Helga was sending his way and probably hoping he didn't catch on amused rather than upset his nerves. He heard himself laugh, a single percussive "Ha!" moments after she flashed the symbol for his pitch. Helga's cheeks darkened in her mask, and Arnold remembered the confession on the roof again.

How long had he gone without noticing his own feelings? Could he puzzle them out in time to give her a proper answer?

Helga's questioning look brought him to this pitch, this game, their partnership. He took a long breath to steady himself, then slowly changed his grip on the ball in his glove, every finger curling under the ball so that he held it primarily by his knuckles and thumb. Wolfgang glared at him down the line, fuming and ready to hit whatever fastball came his way. Helga flexed her mitt, light on her toes, ready to bound in whatever direction his throw took.

_Just imagine yourself as a calm spring, _Arnold recalled Helga's advice when she showed him the throw. _This pitch is fast, but it's all about confusing the batter with a throw that has no spin. It'll seem to hover towards the plate, and any wind will make it seem to wobble. The ball is floating down the river, Arnold. Find that calm positive center in you that I know you have._

Arnold closed his eyes and imagined the line to home plate as a river, clear and blue, originating at his feet and coursing in a straight line over home plate. In his mind's eye, he saw a ball floating down the river randomly, bouncing gently against the waves of the swift course, bobbing to and fro as it took whatever journey the chaos of nature dictated. His eyes opened, and he nodded once to Helga. _I'll throw to you, Helga, because I know you'll always catch me._

Arnold wound up and threw his pitch. Wolfgang's eyes widened immediately as he watched the ball wobble out of Arnold's hand, barely rolling forward at all and moving awkwardly down the line towards the plate. Both he and Arnold saw in an instant it would go over the plate, and Arnold could only hope that Helga saw the trajectory clearer than them both.

Wolfgang's stance shifted as he swung with all his strength, his bat arcing in a bright line towards the ungainly and awkward knuckleball. Arnold held his breath in that terrible instant, watching Helga suddenly spring up from her position, moving quickly up and away from Wolfgang, out towards left field with her glove outstretched as far as it could go. Wolfgang's bat swung clear of the ball, missing it entirely as the knuckleball Arnold threw suddenly veered dramatically off its relatively straight path and wide outside the box.

"Catch it!" He heard himself shout, seeing the third base runner scrambling towards home in his periphery. If Helga missed the ball and it went past her, they would score another run for sure.

Helga's glove seemed to leap out of her hand, swatting the ball out of the air hard and slapping it onto the ground with a dramatic thud kicking up a shroud of dust. Phil stood ready behind her, watching the third baseman kick his legs underneath himself in a last ditch slide to home.

Arnold watch in awe as Helga turned her body, tagging the sixth grader stealing home on the foot, turning all the way around and throwing the ball in a rocket line to Stinky on second base.

Everybody stared in the immediate aftermath, almost too surprised and impressed to process what they had just seen. Arnold saw though, and was smiling as wide as he could at the panting Helga, who not only just caught his wayward knuckleball, but nailed a double play for the team and ended the inning, single-handedly altering the course of the game.

Cheering erupted wildly among the fourth graders, who rushed home plate to dog pile the shrieking Helga, who protested their over-enthusiasm with threats and flailing limbs. Arnold just stood on his mound, deliriously happy and fulfilled. He'd trusted Helga totally in that moment, letting her call the pitch and throwing the ball he had no control of to her. She caught his ball, and then went above and beyond anyone's expectations to secure their chance at victory.

Arnold joined the rest of the team on the bleachers, waiting until everybody was done congratulating Helga on her genius play to approach her. She reddened when she saw him approach, then scowled.

"If you're here to pat me on the back give it a rest. I got enough from these morons already."

Arnold sat next to her on the bench, grinning. "No, Helga, I actually just came to tell you that I got your message loud and clear."

She looked evasively away, leaning down to tie her shoe that was already tightly tied in a neat little bow. "I've got no idea what you're blathering about, Football Head."

"I think you do, Helga."

"You're not making any sense, Arnoldo, you might wanna drink some water or something. You sound delirious, probably sunstroke. Not that I _care_, we just need you to finish these overgrown babies off next inning."

"Sure Helga. Whatever you say. Just one more thing."

"_What_?" She shot back sharply. "You're getting on my nerves, sheesh, you just won't leave me alone. It's like you're in _love_ with me or something, gross. Say your peace and then leave. Me. Alone."

"It's a message for Deep Voice, if you happen to ever run into them by any random chance. Tell them I know they're always there for me, and it doesn't go unnoticed. In fact, I really like it. And I'll figure out a way soon to repay and return the favor. Tell them to just be patient, I need to figure some things out before I go and say something _in the heat of the moment._"

A slack-jawed, shocked into silence Helga Pataki stared back at Arnold, her face growing ever deeper shades of red, her neck getting splotchy and her ears almost purple with surprised embarrassment. Before she could respond, Arnold stood up, smiling pleasantly. "And Helga?"

"Y-y-yes, Arnold?" Her voice was soft and small.

"You're up to bat."

* * *

Helga chewed her lip with concern, watching Arnold's feet slightly ahead of her lead them towards Gerald field. An empty stomach, angry and vocal about its current situation, loudly gurgled in her ears with every step. She hadn't gotten a chance to eat breakfast, and Helga was not at her best when she was hungry. In fact, she was a veritable terror. She dreaded the inevitable conflict she would rouse with Arnold when things got difficult or stressful, amplified by the emptiness in her belly.

What was even more maddening was the fact that Arnold hadn't said a single word to her since they left her apartment. The entire long walk, stony silence sat between the two would be lovers, making its presence known in the intruding sounds of the street and Helga's hungry innards. She struggled with what to say, deep in argument with herself over how she would apologize.

_He definitely deserved a smack for this, Helga old girl. Don't go soft and let him off the hook just because he's so damn gorgeous in that tank top. Don't let him off easy. Don't look at his shoulders and back, no, I said __**don't**__ look!_

_Sorry Helga, I'm gonna look. I want to eat him up. Look at the definition under his shoulder blades, my god. He could lift me over his head. The second I get a chance I am going to __devour__ him._

_No, no, no! This is all wrong! Arnold deserves an apology, a sincere vow to never raise a hand against him ever again, he, my perfect God, who in my hubris I saw fit to strike for his benevolence! I know his heart is just, even if his actions are confusing and irritating and really infuriating._

_God dammit Arnold why did it have to be Lila? Anyone else in the world, I would have been able to shrug this off._

_Alright, alright, enough crazy person internal arguments, Helga. Time to cowgirl up and eat crow. You know this is the right thing to do. First we tell him he deserved to get socked, then we apologize sincerely and promise to never hit him again, __then__ we jump his bones and screw him all over Gerald field._

She looked up at Arnold, finally steel in her resolve to make good on her intended capitulations. One hesitation, then a second, and she finally opened her mouth a third time, pushing air out of her lungs and forcing herself to talk.

"Arnold, I want to-"

"Be quiet, Helga," he immediately interrupted her.

"E-excuse me? Arnold, I just want to-"

"I said, be quiet." His voice carried a tone she'd never heard before, something strong, something irresistible. She felt herself grow physically excited hearing it from him, surprising herself with her own interest. Despite herself, she found it difficult to disobey his command, and so went back to a fierce internal dialogue with her warring motivations.

_Did he just __shush__ me mid-apology? Who does he think he is? Nobody but __nobody__ shushes Helga Geraldine Pataki when she's about to make a sincere, heartfelt apology! I oughta walk away right now!_

_No, wait, don't do that. This is my chance to explore that suddenly dominant side of his. How __**delicious**__. I'll just work up a little hot-cold routine and tease him a bit and see if I can get that to come out again. Oh man, I wonder if he gets rough? Easy, Helga, old girl, try not to drool. The thought of Arnold Shortman getting rough and ravishing you might be just __**too**__ great to handle right now. One step at a time._

_First things first, be patient and let him do whatever it is he's got planned. Maybe it's something nice? Maybe we'll play a little catch and then make up and get back to the kissing._

Helga held onto her small hopes with tenacious grit, obediently following Arnold to Gerald field with only questions in her mind.

When they arrived, Arnold quietly put his glove on and started to stretch his arms, swinging his well-muscled limbs to get them limber. Helga watched him from the corner of her eye, strapping her shin guards and chest protector into place. It'd been some time since she played catcher, last playing in her freshman year of college as a favor to Phoebe's softball team. She'd reluctantly agreed, having mostly lost a taste for catching when it wasn't for Arnold. She never could jive with a pitcher as well as she had when he took the mound.

Of course, she still kept in practice. She spent as much time at the batting cages as she could, in between visits to the gym and practice with Brainy. She alternated catching the machine-thrown balls and hitting them, getting in whatever practice she could to keep her skills as sharp as could be managed without live play.

_I wonder if he kept his pitch in shape_, Helga wondered, sliding her mask over her hat and face. She put a few fists into the fat fold of her catcher's mitt, her eyes studying his physique in a slightly less lecherous way, looking for the specific arrays of musculature and tone that would indicate he'd kept in playing shape.

_God he's hot_, she couldn't help but ogle, but kept her perversions to herself. He looked pretty fit, and had strong back muscles around the shoulders and deltoids. She could see them move under his skin when he wound his arms up, loosening the ligaments and tendons. She shook her hands at her sides, working out the tension of the previous night with stretching while she watched him.

Finally, Arnold nodded to her, and tossed her the ball gently. She caught it without effort, and returned the favor. They played catch for about a dozen more throws, getting warmed up in silence from the mound and home plate.

_He's staring at me._ Helga squirmed under his gaze, feeling hot in her chest and face at the scrutiny. _What is he looking for?_ Helga knew why _she _was staring of course, and felt terribly human in her humbling sexual urges towards him, especially now that she knew something of what he was capable of. But she was also terrified that he was here to do something horrible.

_Did he bring me here to dump me?_ She thought, and then immediately followed it with, _You have to be dating first to get dumped, dumbass. You just fucked him._

Finally, Helga had enough of catch. "You ready to pitch, already?" The bite of impatience in her tone was hopefully enough to mask her nervousness. Arnold nodded, and caught her return ball before stepping into his pitching form. Helga crouched at the plate, slapping her fist into the mitt for emphasis, and then held her free hand behind her back. She wanted to see what he'd throw on his own, without prompting.

Helga's eyes watched his form with an expert's scrutiny while he wound up, his foot kicking high before turning his body dramatically to launch a blistering fastball straight down the line. It was a bit high, and rose up even more as it crossed the plate, making Helga raise the mitt to her face, right below her left eye. The ball slapped into her mitt with surprising force, stinging her palm even through the thick mitt.

She lowered the mitt slowly, anger immediately welling inside her, but suppressed by the surprise she felt. She was legitimately impressed. He'd thrown his fastball so that it would fly straight at the side of her face she had hit him on, even down to the spot on her cheek that matched his. It was quite a statement.

_Is this your payback, Arnold? I bet you thought of that right before you threw it. You don't have the heart for revenge, but you are tragically impulsive, my dear sweet boy. Still, that better be the __only__ time that happens._

Helga stood, throwing the ball into Arnold's glove, her voice gruff. "Your shoulder's stiff. And you released too early."

Arnold smirked. "That sounds familiar."

Helga tried to recall that exact combination of advice. Something about it sounded familiar, she agreed. Then, she remembered the last time she caught for Arnold. The day of the celebration game.

Her mind was a chaotic swirl of emotions and recalled vexation as she lowered back behind the plate. She could tell by his stance, his form, and the strength and sharpness of his pitch. He had refined his throw into a competitive weapon. He'd serve well as a ringer in amateur leagues, maybe he even had the chops to try out for the minor leagues if he focused and got himself into fighting shape. He had total control of the ball. It was no mistake he threw to that exact spot. Arnold was invoking that specific memory, and telling her something.

_What is he saying to me? Does he want me to remember our win over Wolfgang? Is he trying to get me to remember the knuckleball?_

Helga puzzled the mystery out, tugging at threads of possibility and unraveling the tangled mess of their shared past while she crouched back down, opening the mitt dead center over the plate.

Arnold's arm rocketed a much faster shot straight into the glove almost the instant she was settled down into her squat and had her glove open. He'd started his wind up before she was ready! Her hand felt that familiar hot sting on the palm, amplified by the harder second hit. She felt her pulse in her palm already. This time the ball had slammed straight into its position without any change of altitude or direction over the plate. A clean, textbook fastball.

Helga said nothing as she threw the ball back, settling back down faster to avoid Arnold's hasty pitches from catching her off guard a second time.

_What was __that__ throw? Perfectly straight, right into the glove, almost before I was ready to catch? What's his rush? Arnold, you better be careful, if you're trying to express your anger with me this way, things are going to get ugly quickly._

Again and again, Arnold delivered almost perfectly straight, unerring fastballs with steadily increasing tempo and air speed, wherever Helga positioned her mitt. She started placing it in unusual positions, high inside, almost touching the ground, even above her head. Every time, Arnold stoically delivered a pitch with nearly perfect straight trajectory into her mitt with surprising force. Helga's hand had grown used to the fat sting of the ball, and now that she was warmed up, she started to earnestly enjoy the simple physical activity, and really got into putting Arnold through her rigors despite herself.

After about an hour of thirty throws, Helga stood up and tossed the ball back to Arnold and decided to speak. "We gonna talk about this today, Arnold? Or did you just drag me out here to show me your modestly improved fastballs?"

Arnold caught the ball and regarded Helga with the cockiest look she'd ever seen him display. "We _are_ talking. Start making some calls, I'm set on fastballs."

Helga could barely believe he was ordering her around, but found herself crouching back down without offering a complaint or rebuttal. _What does he mean, 'we __are__ talking?' He's just throwing fastballs wherever I put my mitt. Does he mean he wants to follow my lead or something? Dammit, I am a __verbal__ communicator, Arnold. Songs and poems and big dramatic speeches, don't try to wizard up some kind of secret code here. Alright, you want to talk without talking? Let's show darling Arnold that this is fucking annoying!_

Her hand moving through a few swift configurations, Helga commanded Arnold to show her his best curveball, and then held her glove far inside and nearly touching the plate. If he threw it right, it would have to arc dramatically from outside, over the plate, and into her glove on the opposite end, dipping down the whole time. She knew Arnold couldn't ever make that throw as a kid, because his curveball was garbage. He was just too straightforward to get it right.

Helga blinked in surprise when the ball smacked into her glove after an elegant downwardly sweeping curve across the plate, still with enough force to make her feel it.

Next, she commanded that he hook the ball the other direction, high and far outside the plate. Arnold grinned before he wound up, clearly enjoying this exchange. Helga was hardly surprised much when he nailed the shot.

Again and again, Arnold did his best to match whatever unruly pitch Helga called to him. Hooks, screwballs, fastballs, and sliders, Helga demanded of Arnold the most grueling array of pitches she could imagine. And Helga had a singularly cruel and creative imagination. And little by little, through every mistake he made and perfect shot he managed, Helga's mind began to turn over from frustration, vexation, and spleen, towards the secret tender kindness within her that ached and yearned for release.

_So the kid went and learned some new pitches. He still has decent form on these unfamiliar throws, too. And he's __smiling__. If it wasn't so beautiful to see I'd want to punch him right in that cocky little smile. Arnold, what a boob. What a maroon. What an easygoing pushover. And yet, what a delightfully brave and effervescently plucky darling. What a kind soul, to weather the myriad of increasingly complex throws I call to him! To struggle through the irregular forms and positions, and make do with the skills he has accumulated, and smile at me the while! Oh, Arnold, I hear you now! Whatever I call, you will throw to me, is that your message? Is it trust, blind trust, so carelessly given to an unworthy unruly beast such as me, with my fierce heart and dangerous propensity for unfortunate violence? Do you speak of acceptance in your pitch? This throw, that throw, do you speak to my heart through my hand? Oh, Arnold, king of my heart, royalty of this soul of Helga's, are you truly so saintly as to place your honored trust in me?_

Helga finally came to the last call she knew, after dozens of throws. Sweat slicked Arnold's tank top to his chest, and ran down his neck from his forehead under his blue cap. Helga's body was similarly sticky with perspiration under her gear, and her knees and ankles were starting to burn in protest for the rigorous and unexpected workout she was putting them through. Grey clouds rolled above them, grumbling in the promise of a storm later. Her hunger tickled her throat, clicking in quiet protest that she had agreed to this ridiculous exertion the day after a night of explosively cathartic musicianship and performance, passionate and acrobatic sex, and brutal physical violence. She hurt everywhere, and was exhausted after spending these couple of hours throwing with Arnold. He had to be tired, too, she reasoned, by the way his chest rose and fell and the long pauses between his throws.

_Only one call left, and then I'll tell him everything I can. I don't care if he shushes me or not._

Helga stared at Arnold for a long moment, soaking in the sight of him, burning the image in her memory. She wanted to remember this feeling, this simple, easy back and forth with her beloved that took the funny form of a simple game of catch at their childhood baseball field. It seemed like an excellent footnote to their childhood. Something she could look back on without regrets, whatever happened next.

Her hand opened into the sign for his knuckleball, forefinger and pinky extended, thumb held at a ninety degree angle.

Arnold's face cracked into a huge, wide smile, eyes creasing in noble little crow's feet at the corners.

Arnold's wind up was especially enthusiastic, the precise angles and structures of his form technically flawless from Helga's perspective. She bit her lower lip in concentration, light on her toes and ready to do anything to get this ball in her mitt.

Arnold's arm swung out, and the ball left his hand seeming to float in space towards her, unspinning. Errant wind and ambient air pressure made the ball seem to bob and wobble in space as it drifted with speed over the plate, suddenly dropping out and towards her hip as it drew close. Helga saw the minute turn and movement, and falling on her catcher's instincts, swiftly hopped backwards, falling onto her butt, but her mitt caught the irregularly dancing knuckleball just before it hit the ground. She sat on the ground, legs out under her, staring at the ball in her glove with a strange fluttering in her heart.

"I knew you'd catch that," Arnold said with a small laugh.

Helga looked up at him, suddenly very aware of what they were talking now.

_He threw something that I taught him was all about trust, but only once I asked him to trust me and throw it. Arnold's been trusting me this whole morning, following my demands and meeting my requests without complaint, even smiling. And he looked forward to letting totally go of his own control and just letting his heart guide him with our last throw. Arnold's forgiven me. Arnold trusts me._

She felt her chest tighten and a lump of emotion catch in her throat, before she managed to finally croak out her emotionally charged response to her beloved.

"I always will."

* * *

Arnold watched Helga tear into her lunch ravenously, laughing at her little moans of appreciation and squeals of pleasure as she wolfed down the _Triple Bypass Bacon Burger_ she ordered with extra the works. He chewed his own _Don't Be a Hero Habanero Burger_ with pleasure, sitting across from Helga on a red bench in front of Hillwood's most popular new food truck, Lorenzo's newest investment, Burger Overload.

It had been her idea when he posed the notion of getting lunch together after the knuckleball. They had not talked much on the short walk from Gerald field, mostly discussing baseball, and their favorite teams, and what they expected out of the league this season. Small talk, Arnold recognized, was important in the cool down after their encounters, letting them express themselves comfortably without the extra added effort of emotional maneuvering.

Now they engorged themselves on trashy street food, making barnyard noises of appreciation and insisting that the other was missing out on their burger choices.

Finally, they sat grasping their unruly stomachs, which protested the cataclysmic payload that had been delivered suddenly without regard to pacing or overall readiness for such fare. Helga rubbed her little round tummy, splayed out on the bench with her legs kicked wide apart and her baseball cap pulled over her eyes for shade from the sun. Arnold admired the easygoing posture, the relaxed configuration of her limbs and attitude, appreciating the rare gift he was getting with visual contact on a physically sated and content Helga Pataki.

She became alert to his happy stare, however, and her expression blackened and became angry.

"What are you staring at, Football Head?" Helga's tone betrayed the interest she had at his answer.

"Just you, Helga." He didn't even bother hiding his smile, made all the more obvious by his still swollen cheek.

Her face became a puzzled assembly of embarrassment and outrage, the corners of her mouth unable to keep from curling in a tiny smile. "Wha-what are you talking about, _hair boy, _why are you gawking at me like some lovesick stalker?"

He laughed, finally able to play her game with her. "I guess I am a lovesick stalker."

She turned red again, and turned away in a little pout, unable or unwilling to meet eye contact with him any further. Arnold decided he'd let her say her peace now, if she opted to start talking, and would follow whatever she said with his apology. He'd basically said everything he intended to say already, his pitches singing the harmony of his heart with every obtuse throw Helga called to him.

Finally, she started to speak, clearing her throat and talking just barely so that he could hear her.

"I'm really, really sorry I hit you."

"I know."

"You just have no idea how terrible I felt. How much that hurt. And right after we...well, I won't make any more sad excuses. Helga Pataki owns up to her faults. I apologize, Arnold. I never should have hit you, you didn't deserve that."

Arnold remembered the terror of her punch, and the immediate aftermath. It was an unpleasant memory, and he had a bruised cheekbone to help him recall it any time he looked in the mirror. But, he was still too contented to care.

"Nah, I totally deserved it."

"Would you just let me apologize and feel like shit please?" Helga rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed.

"I mean, it _was_ your fault for pressing so hard on a topic I said to let go. I knew nothing good would come of telling you the whole story then. But I was going to get a well-deserved smack sometime, and you and I don't exactly have good timing."

She smiled sheepishly at that. "No, we don't."

"But I'm okay with the war wound for a little while. Keeps me honest. And helps me remember to keep my mouth shut."

Helga nodded a little, seeming as if she was confused and unsure about what to say next.

"I mean, I am still really pissed, and I don't think that is going away soon. You were _engaged _to someone else. Someone I _hate."_

"I know I was, I was there, and in fact I was the one who did the whole proposing. Sorry."

She looked so torn, internally, clearly sad and angry but forcing herself still where Arnold imagined her limbs wanted to leap up and throttle him.

"_How _did that _happen_?" She finally forced it out, sounding a little scared.

"I owed her my life. She was affectionate and attentive and flawlessly selfless when it came to me. When she asked me for help for the first time _ever_, I thought it was the best and only way I could make her happy. Make her...whole again, somehow."

"So you thought the only way to make her happy and help her was to take bended knee and ruin your life?" Helga's bitterness was out in the open, her face a flushed mess of hurt.

"Well, actually, I never did the knee thing. I didn't even really ask her properly. We were at her kitchen table, and I just said 'I think I should marry you,' and she nodded and said she would like that. I just sort of got her a ring after that, and then I guess it was official."

"How _romantic_ of you, Football Head. How perfectly gallant. So not only did you fuck up and get engaged, but you fucked up getting engaged too."

"Hey, watch it, I did what I thought was the right thing. And then I was trapped by it."

"I really don't get you right now, Arnold. I thought I understood you perfectly, but this, this is just such a huge mess it's difficult to imagine how it could be _worse._ I mean, I always knew your heart was going to get you in trouble someday, what with you being so _blindly_ altruistic all the time, with no regard to common sense, and paying no heed to reality, but this is _fucked._ You _really_ fucked up."

"I know I did," Arnold sighed, looking at his plate of fries. The pressure of her admonishment was overwhelming. Part of his wanted to hide from her, but Arnold always found bravery easiest when he was frightened. "But, I'm not _blindly_ altruistic Helga. In fact, I'm pretty selfish."

"You got that right, but how do _you_ mean that. Because _I_ know the answer to that question, I'm just not totally sold on the concept that _you_ know the right answer."

A particularly frank person such as Arnold would be aggrieved of Helga's continued needling, especially considering her past behavior being less than spotlessly clean. However, being a man in love, seeking to reconcile, Arnold pushed past the naturally human response to her continued aggression with hostility, and settled on mildly annoyed sarcasm.

"Would you just let me apologize and feel like shit please?" He huffed, mimicking Helga to emphasize his point.

"I haven't heard an apology _yet_, Arnold."

"I'm getting there, but your commentary is getting irritating."

"Oh, I'm sorry my partnership in this conversation is annoying you. Should I just shut my pretty mouth up and let the man speak?" Helga's voice oozed with sarcasm, saccharine sweet and laced with poison.

"Knock it off, don't even remark or suggest that I have sexist tendencies. I'm trying to get to my point."

"Which is?"

"Which is that I am pretty selfish, because instead of keeping my promise to Lila, moments before the party I dumped her so that I could see if I had a shot with you."

That shut Helga up pretty good.

"_That's_ why you broke it off with her?"

"Yes. Specifically, your text message picture of your important box and the pink bow, when I got that, I felt so many confusing, wonderful, terrifying things that I couldn't stomach the idea of thinking even one thought for Lila while I saw you. I selfishly wanted everything I did and felt to be about you. So, in the middle of an argument _about you _with my then _fiancée, _I break the whole thing off."

Helga fiddled with her leftover fries, pushing them around in her smear of ketchup, unanswering, trembling slightly. Arnold couldn't see her face very well, but he could tell she was smiling.

"So that's my selfishness. Part of it. The other part, the part you're probably thinking of, is this stubborn idea I have in me that I can fix everyone. I can't. I wish I could. I want to. I'm always going to try. But sometimes, I lose sight of what the right thing really is when there's enough at stake. This is selfishness born of selflessness, but it's still harmful to my friends and loved ones sometimes. Especially my loved ones."

Helga put her hand over her face, covering her eyes, and pushed a shaking question out of herself bravely. "A-a-and which of those am I?"

Arnold waited half a beat, then responded. "Isn't it obvious?"

Helga bit her lip, shrugging. "Friend, right?"

"No, Helga. No. Come on. Look up at me, please."

Helga shook her head. "No, I'm really interested in my hand right now. I really _really_ need to focus on this hand right now."

Arnold identified that it would have been selfish to force her to look at him, when she clearly was holding on to this conversation for dear life. "Alright, Helga, but just remember, you'll always regret not seeing what my face looked like when I said what I am about to say."

Helga slowly lifted her head from her hands, her eyes red and threatening tears. Arnold was a little surprised at the reaction.

"Can we not do this now then?" He heard the difficulty and strain in her voice, recognized it as her showing an open weakness. He respected that.

"Okay, Helga. Whatever you say."

"Thank you. I'm just...not ready, or prepared, physically or emotionally, for this conversation yet. And I don't want to have it all dirty and sweaty and unshowered in my trashiest clothes possible. In fact, I'd very much like to just hide away and not have to deal with this, but, I know we have to eventually."

"I understand, Helga. And look, this is just the first date, there's time yet for other heavy stuff."

Helga's eyebrows arched high, strong accents of surprise on her slightly sunburnt face. "Date?"

"Yeah. This is totally a date."

"Are we on a date?"

Arnold reached across the table, touching her hand reassuringly. "Yes, Helga, this was a date from the minute you left the apartment."

"This doesn't _feel_ like a conventional date, Football Head. It's a pretty lousy excuse for romance, actually."

"Well, maybe so, you're right. This is definitely not a conventional date. But you and I are not really that conventional."

She smiled despite herself, a cocky grin on her face, creasing her generous lips. "You got that right, Football Head."

"So, you don't mind if I consider this a date? And proceed that way?"

"Mind?" Helga half laughed, catching her breath in her chest and shaking her head with a stupid grin. "Arnold, shut your stupid, moronic, foolish, incredibly attractive face with that 'mind' talk. Mind? Arnold, I'm _floating._ I'm not even touching the ground. If this is a date, just you and me, no Cecile, no Phoebe and Gerald, no Brainy or Lila, just you and me, then this is something I've hoped for and dared to dream of for my entire life. I don't _care_ that it started with baseball or if it ends in a handshake or a bedroom. I'm on a _date_ with _Arnold._"

Arnold took notice of the bedroom remark, but just kept smiling at her. "Well good, I'm glad. What do you say we take a small break, get cleaned up, and spend the afternoon catching up? There's a lot I missed, and I would really love to hear your perspective."

"Can't we just find someplace quiet and make out?" Helga wagged her eyebrows at Arnold, who laughed at her suggestion.

"Maybe later, Helga. I've spent ten years wanting to just _talk_ to you, and now that we can do that without coming to blows, I'd like to take advantage before something else hideously unexpected happens."

"That's probably smart, uncharacteristically so for you, Football Head."

"So even if we are on a date, the little jabs and names don't stop, huh?"

"Arnold, Arnold, Arnold. A long time ago you asked me why I didn't just change and be nicer when my attitude was getting in my own way."

"Right, I remember, when you were the It Girl."

"Precisely. And do you remember what I said back then?"

"You said something like, 'Arnold, I'm mean and nasty and that's just the way it is.' I think."

"Close. I said that I am a mean, nasty, inconsiderate person, but that it was what made me _Me._ It's what makes me special, in a way, and I can't just turn it off. Don't worry, if you keep being nice and romantic to me and take me on dates, you'll get to see the Helga that is tender and affectionate and warm. And extremely sexually frustrated."

She grinned. Arnold blushed.

"But, the rest of me isn't going to just _go away_. You always said that you knew that deep down I was this kindhearted, generous person. And that is true, you weren't wrong, but you gotta understand the rest of me is real, too. I am a nasty, mean, inconsiderate person, who is _also_ tender and affectionate and warm. And sexually frustrated."

Arnold was beginning to notice a theme. He chuckled a bit, getting the picture.

"Okay, I got it. I think I understand you now, Helga."

"Do you? Because a girl can only hint so many times that she wants to crawl all over you like a jungle gym."

Arnold laughed, a big, healthy laugh with his whole ribcage and chest. It'd been the first honest laugh he'd had in years.

"Alright, calm it down, Pataki. I just ate what could be considered a medically inadvisable amount of habaneros. We'll American Gladiator it up proper after we both have some pretty thorough showers. I still haven't showered since last night."

"I think I showered. I dyed my hair anyway, and washed the bleach out."

"Yeah, what happened there?" Arnold hadn't mentioned her silvery white hair yet, and was glad the opportunity to bring it up had arrived organically.

"I, uh, well, in my post-coital freak out, I kind of lost a handle on the whole _reality_ thing and _self-identity_ and the concepts of _morality_ and ended up naked, thrashing my apartment, and bleaching my hair. I'll probably be unraveling the thought-images and memories of last night with Dr. Bliss for years. _That_ should be fun."

Arnold grew slightly queasy, and it wasn't obvious if it was because of the habanero peppers or the revelation that he'd had that much of a damaging effect. Somewhere in the guilty recesses of his mind, where memory was still too fresh to push aside their troubles, Arnold worried that perhaps, _just perhaps_, he was too dangerous for Helga's emotional wellbeing.

For now, though, he pushed the notion out of his mind, and opted on apologizing again.

"Helga, I'm really sorry, again, I just have to say it. Jeez, I really messed up."

"You did, but, so did I. So it's okay. Or it _will_ be okay. I've been meaning to change up the hairstyle for years now...I just, uh. Never mind, actually." Helga suddenly became evasive, looking askance of the table and biting her lip.

"What? Go ahead, you can tell me whatever it is. I want to hear."

"Yeah, I'm just not sure I want to _tell_ you, Football Head." She seemed to search his face, and then sighed, relenting. "I didn't dare cut it or style it until I saw you again. I, uh…" Her voice grew small, and grumpy. "I wanted you to see me the way you remembered, with pigtails and long hair."

Arnold was struck with the frank honesty of her confession, and touched by the sentiment. Of course, it didn't matter to him what Helga looked like after ten years of separation, he was just delighted to see her. But the familiarity of her long blonde locks had been reassuring.

"I never told you how blown away by your, uh, adultness I was. You look so different, but just the same. It's lovely."

"Sh-shut up, Arnold. Flattery isn't necessary." Arnold knew that Helga was secretly thrilled by the wicked curl on her lips that she struggled to keep in a frown.

"I mean it! But, listen, if you want to change your hair, change it to whatever you want."

"It _is_ a bit hot, and I haven't ever cut it short...I dunno, I'll get Phoebe to help me. She's always been pretty savvy with that kind of girly girl stuff."

Arnold and Helga whittled away the midday heat together, regarding each other more casually than they ever had before. The intensity, the tension, the remarkable connection of their years glued their attentions to one another, and Arnold felt vividly alive with every movement and breath. He found himself obvious in his affections, offering compliments and doting in little teacup comments that he peppered in their back and forth. It embarrassed Helga terribly, and it made her nervous, but she was clearly enjoying herself.

Finally, Arnold suggested that they break for mutual retirement to their respective bathrooms for showers, and meet again in three hours for part two.

"Sure, Arnold, that sounds fine," Helga shrugged. "You sure you don't wanna just make it...one shower?" Her tentative grin and suggestive arc of her eyebrows lit Arnold on fire, but, he knew they'd just spend the rest of the day wrapped around one another if he gave in. He considered it, however, at length, and was long in his hesitation to refuse her advances yet again.

"I'm going to start calling you Hornga," Arnold laughed.

"_Horn_ga? What the fuck, Arnold," her laughter bubbled with his.

"Yeah, 'cause you're such a horn dog. Hornga. What, no good?"

Helga finished snickering, putting a hand on his shoulder with an adoring smile. "No, Arnold. It's terrible. Never say it again."

The two friends, tentatively lovers, laughed together, standing to part.

Helga's hand found Arnold's, and she shyly, hesitantly, clung to his fingers. "I don't really wanna go."

"I don't either, but I do want to get cleaned up."

"I'm just worried that if I let you go again, something will happen and get between us again and we'll never find each other."

"It's just a couple of hours, and you'll like what you see. I clean up nice. You should go all out, wear something fancy. I have something really big in mind."

"I trust you to really go over the top like always, Arnold, don't worry. But I _really_ don't want to go back to the apartment and find Brainy waiting for me with something hideous and cathartic to say or find out Lila's been stalking you or something like Fuzzy Slippers is back and out to get me or something."

Arnold was silently blown away with Helga's accuracy. He could confirm the last, guess at the second, and was suspicious of the first suggestion Helga had just casually rattled off. She might be right. But he really wanted their first date to be perfect, now that it was officially going to start.

What could go wrong?

"I promise everything will be fine. Tell you what, let's shrink the timetable. Meet me at Gerald Field in one hour. Better?"

"It's not even the time, though, I just am afraid to let you out of my sight. You're kind of a wreck, and a sap, and liable to find out someone at the boarding house has a broken hip and spend all night at the hospital. Or find out that Curly's about to jump off a building and hop a bus to New York. Arnold, this town's too fucked up! I can't let you out of my sight."

"Helga, you're being over dramatic," Arnold patiently tried to explain. "Don't you trust me? I won't let anything get in the way of our date."

"I do trust you, even though that's a historically stupid thing to do."

"See? Just be stupid and let me go get a shower and put on a suit."

"A suit?" Helga's eyes lit up and her face drew into a sloppy grin. "What color?"

"Charcoal. Why?"

Helga looked at her feet, and Arnold saw her wage an internal struggle by the repeated distortions of her facial features. Finally, she took a steadying breath, and nodded.

"Okay...Okay. For a suit, I can let you go get dressed. But you have to _promise_ me, even if your house starts burning down you'll let the freaking _firemen_ handle it and come meet me. I mean it. If you're not in that field in _one hour_ I'm going to be really, really chapped."

Arnold nodded, squeezing her fingers reassuringly.

"I promise. I'll make it. One hour."

Helga locked eyes with Arnold, and let his hand go. "I trust you."

They parted ways, drifting slowly apart, unaware that the next hour of their lives would be the most harrowing and difficult in their thus far extremely short lived relationship.

And that it would put every ounce of their trust and affection for one another to the test.


	12. Chapter 12 - To Be a Child Again

A/N: Welcome back to the show.

I apologize that the intermission has been so long. I'm sure after my breakneck pace of updates in the first half of the story, a nearly six month pause seems practically infinite. Well, I'm back, and the story continues. I will try to keep a reasonable pace, most likely an update a month, until we are done.

Thank you all for your continued reader support and feedback. I'm excited to get back to our kids, and see where the road takes us.

Oh, also, many thousand apologies, but we won't get to see Helga and Arnold in present day for awhile...better strap in, it's time for flashbacks and exposition.

**Emergency Edit**: Due to massive brainfarts, I was calling Nadine Sheena. I blame liquor, and today's public schooling system, and the corruption of our youth.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 12: To Be a Child Again, and Easily Forgiven

"No [one], for any considerable period, can wear one face to [them]self and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

* * *

Her face shielded by the open blue door of her locker, Lila stood in listening distance of two familiar faces, bent close in conspiratorial whisper. She stood very still, not even breathing, listening with every ounce of concentration she could muster. Rhonda and Nadine were trying to keep quiet, but the subject matter of their hushed conversation caused them to unintentionally raise their voices from time to time, giving Lila tasty little tidbits to piece the meat of their secretive exchange together.

Such subterfuge had become a common practice for Lila, who moved in secret unbeknownst to any of her friends as the shadowy entity known only as Fuzzy Slippers.

She hated the name, for the record, and regarded the childish nomenclature as a troublesome artifact of the immature mind that cooked it up in the first place: Gerald. Though the idea was his humble creation, the reality had taken a monstrous life of its own with Lila behind the veil. If she was honest, she adored a juicy mystery story, and in the grandest traditions of Moriarity and Count Mountebank she orchestrated disaster, tragedy, victory, and loss for the lives of her completely ignorant peer group.

Nobody knew who moved behind the name Fuzzy Slippers, after all, except for one person. And as long as she kept to her side of the bargain - which suited her ultimate game _just fine_ \- her secret would be kept safe. Besides, she wasn't as simple to leave such an obvious weakness unchecked. A devastating trick, a masterfully planted and tended dead man's trigger, awaited the off chance that her identity could be compromised.

Helga G. Pataki was safe from her direct actions as Fuzzy Slippers thanks to Brainy's little secret, but a terrible fate awaited her should there be some tragic slip of the tongue somewhere.

But Helga was not someone Lila spent a lot of time thinking about. The shadow of the person Pataki used to be moved through the hallways of their highschool, haunting the spaces of friendly memory with sepulcher expression and distant eyes. Totally uninteresting, and a bit of a drag. Lila liked happy things, happy endings, and there was no happy ending for Helga. Not anymore.

Arnold had more or less stopped mentioning her in his letters to Lila a year or so ago. He always wrote to "tell everyone I say hello," but Lila didn't count that as anything explicitly for Pataki. Not that Lila was jealous of Helga, not in the slightest. Truthfully, she was always rooting for the troubled girl to finally express her crush and capitalize on it. It was a secret she was glad to keep, and in fact maybe the only one she had still kept so far. The fact that her story ended sad, unacted on, a footnote in the past was a bit of a disappointment for Lila when she was younger. Now she hardly thought about it at all, as newer disasters and star crossed love affairs began to spring around her in fierce bursts of teenage passion, and a girl has got to keep busy with her interests. And Lila had ever so much to do.

Namely, stay a step ahead of her worthy opponents in Gerald and Phoebe.

In her two friends, Lila had found truly dangerous foes, capable and clever and determined to hunt Fuzzy Slippers down and end their campaign of making things interesting. They had no idea it was her. They never would. That secret was something she would preserve and guard with all her efforts. And just in case things got too heated, she had a thousand ways to kill the trail cold stone dead, and would simply shed the identity altogether. Although she had fun spicing up the lives of her friends and fellow high schoolers with the sort of sordid, scandalous tales and rumor-spreading that would typify your worst dime-store soap operas, she felt no attachment to the identity that others called Fuzzy Slippers in hushed tones. It was a useful mask, and Lila was familiar with masks.

Once, she wondered if what she did made her a bad person. But she reasoned that if there was no malicious intent behind the moving of information in surreptitious ways, all she was really doing was accomplishing the inevitable in a merely more interesting, constructive way. She'd ended friendships by revealing secrets, true, but were friendships built on lies and misinformation really worthy of the title? Did two young lovers deserve to stay together and pretend to be happy if one or both of them had proved unfaithful? If dirty laundry was everywhere - and at her high school, there were oh so many _piles_ of the stuff - it wasn't really _wrong_ of her to tidy up. If people she loved and considered friends needed to be burned a little in order to learn an important lesson, was she a bad person for willingly holding the irons over the fire?

To Lila Sawyer, morality was a grey area that had a lot of room for interpretation, and unlucky for her friends, the sensitive, sweetly-dispositioned and nurturing side of her was balanced perfectly with the frank, ever-so-honest and clever side of her, and both sides were balanced against her private self, a more closely guarded self, a Lila Sawyer of cunning and guile that lived within her own pre-set boundaries, and loathed the insecurities of the uncertain. It was a secret she'd carried with her from her home town that she had been quite the gossip and harpy, devoid of all the sweet charm and honest smiles. She had decided to change herself when she moved, seeing a fresh start as a new opportunity for a new Lila. But she simply could not _discard_ the things that made her up. Rather, she found better ways to apply those habits and compulsions, and learned to smile at the absurd, laugh at the ridiculous, and honestly enjoy the idiotic. It made her seem sweet. It made her seem kind. That was fine for Lila.

At first, simply deflecting Arnold's romantic advances had been a wearying, although thorough distraction. His attentions, while sweet and honest, unfortunately did not interest her, and so she found herself patiently, ever-so-sweetly reminding him time and time again that she simply didn't feel that way about him. Were it not for the fact that he was especially persistent and dashing and _attractive,_ she would likely have been far less forgiving. She liked nice people. Arnold was a nice boy. And as far as she could tell, he was impeccably clean. Everyone else at PS118 had something to hide, and something she found lacking in their basic characters. Harold was a selfish loudmouth momma's boy. Phoebe was a perfectionist and a snoot. Rhonda was putting on airs and _far_ to big for her britches. The only flaw she could find in Arnold was that he was so gosh darn in love with her. It's a shame she wasn't interested; but she simply wasn't.

That all changed, though.

It is hard to say when the boy in the letters became more than a friend in the spaces of her heart. How does one even pinpoint the exact moment when the dial switched over from like to love? It wasn't some instant of eureka, with a grand brilliant flash of understanding and romantic intent. Rather, simply, one day Lila realised she was trembling with excitement as she read one of Arnold's doting and sweet missives, and that she had been staring at the picture he sent of himself with his parents much taller and much more handsome than she remembered. _Ah, that must be it, the feeling I was missing,_ she had thought, and was then decidedly smitten.

He didn't know of course. It was hardly the right time for it. And Arnold also didn't know that she planned to go hunt him down once she graduated, or sooner if she could work out studying abroad with her family. She didn't half-ass things. She had too much to do in this life to hesitate. Again, she was reminded of Helga, hesitating, always hesitating. Poor fool.

Rhonda slammed her locker shut suddenly, bringing Lila back to the present from her little moment of daydreaming, and Sawyer busily pretended to be loading and unloading textbooks in her book bag so she could listen.

"I simply can't _believe_ you, Nadine, after everything I've done for you. How could you?"

"How could _I_?" Lila heard the eclectic girl shoot back, apparently uncaring who heard because the volume of her voice has escalated significantly. "Don't you _dare_ try to twist this back onto me, Rhonda, not when you've been ignoring me for some time!."

"Hardly!" Rhonda spun dramatically to face her shorter friend, and Lila could see they were almost inches apart now. As their conversation left the discreetly whispered bickering Lila had been eavesdropping on and became a full blown shouting match, it quickly left the realm of usefulness for her purposes, but it would still be interesting nonetheless. Lila closed her locker and made a point of being seen by Nadine over Rhonda's shoulder. Nadine's eyes recognized her, and then darted onto Rhonda's face nervously.

Rhonda continued, tearing in. "Who was the one that begged me to join her on that absurd camping trip? Who was the one that forced me to keep _Chocolate Boy_ busy while you gallivanted off with your tawdry little love interest, only to _turn him down_? I barely lifted a finger to put an end to what was already a dead end relationship. I resent that you would even accuse me of such a thing, when the blame is so squarely on your shoulders!"

Lila knew the incident they were arguing about now. Nadine had arranged a camping trip with Rhonda, Chocolate Boy, and Lorenzo. Lorenzo wouldn't go without Chocolate Boy, and Chocolate Boy wasn't interested unless Rhonda was going. Lila guessed it hadn't gone well, because not long after that trip Nadine and Lorenzo stopped talking and the tension between Nadine and Rhonda had built to boiling. Fuzzy Slippers may have had a hand in adding some baseless speculation about _why_ it went poorly, however, and heavily insinuated that Rhonda had put the moves on Lorenzo behind Nadine's back. There was some evidence to suggest Nadine's primary reason for being upset with her best friend was jealousy.

It looks like Lila wasn't far off the mark.

"I told you, Rhonda," Nadine spoke slowly, eyeing Lila again with concern. "That was a misunderstanding. A big one. If you would just listen to me about that-"

"I refuse!" Rhonda interrupted. "And now, weeks later, you come to me with petty complaints and trifling grievances, and I've had it. I think we need to spend some time apart."

Lila turned away, as if to give the two of them privacy, but continued to listen to their very public meltdown.

"No, _no_, Rhonda, you're missing the point! I'm upset because we're spending too much time apart already!"

"Not enough, by my estimation."

"Don't, please," Nadine seemed to be almost panicked. Lila heard the strain of emotion in her voice.

"Don't call me." Lila heard Rhonda turn, watched as she stormed past her and turned down the hall in angry silence. The slow sound of a bag slumping to the floor, followed by its owner, told LIla that Nadine wouldn't be moving for some time.

_Best to move on and let them stew on their feelings. _Lila began to puzzle out what in the world they were actually arguing about as she stepped into her next class, mind completely in the complex social web Fuzzy Slippers had helped to weave.

* * *

"You'll be paired off into twelve groups," Lila's English Literature teacher began, handing out project packets to the front of each row of the class. "You have three weeks to complete the projects. Each packet has a number on the last page, please take note of it as I give you more details."

Lila sat at her desk, mind divided into two halves, each working on a separate issue. On the one, she had her attention squared onto the teacher and her class, and the surprise group project she'd be involved in apparently. The other was still ruminating over the Rhonda and Nadine problem. He took a packet from the boy in front of her automatically, passing the rest of the stack backwards.

"There's twenty poems listed in the packet, and you and your partner will select one of them to analyze and read aloud to the class for discussion. You will lead the discussion as a team. Furthermore, your analysis will be turned into me in the form of a six page paper, and will serve as the basis of your discussion with the class."

The teacher, Mr. Oswald, was a man that Lila could tell was handsome twenty years ago, but who had succumbed to a mostly sedentary lifestyle and a few decades of teaching hormonal teenagers the poetry of love. Now, he looked tired, and sounded worse off. Still, she liked him, mostly for his efficiency and impartiality in his grading. Lila always did well in this class.

"Since there's twelve groups and twenty poems, there's the possibility of overlapping, so you and your partner will number off three poems in terms of preference and turn it in to me by the end of today. I'll assign poems based on preference. Now's the time to check out that number on the back again. Your partner has the matching number. So, everybody, get acquainted with your partners."

Mr. Oswald stood back and crossed his arms over his argyle sweater, watching the class stand up and begin noisily and excitedly bustle about to find their missing half from above his round wire rimmed spectacles. Lila saw a special twinkle in his eye, directed at her. _What was that?_

She flipped to the end of her packet and saw the number, 12, and then scanned the room, unsure what she was looking for. Most of the rest of the class was noisily shouting out their numbers, pairs separating off and pushing tables together to get started. She sat at her desk, looking around, wondering-

"Yo, number 12. Looks like we're partners, Sawyer." The one voice in the classroom Lila didn't want to hear belted out from behind her.

Helga Pataki chewed her gum noisily, looking unimpressed at Lila, dressed in what was typical of Pataki these days, which translated to "casual, flannel, torn, dirty-looking, diy, trampy, etc, etc, etc."

"Ah, you have the other number 12 then?" Lila turned to face Pataki, equally as unimpressed.

"Nah I'm just standing here for no reason, figured I'd check out the view from your seat. What th'fuck y'think?" There it was. That ever-so-charming Pataki charisma.

Lila gave Helga a look. It was awfully disappointing to have to be paired to her, but more than that, it was obvious to Lila now what that look meant. Mr. Oswald had distributed the packets on purpose. He knew the way the papers were stacked, Lila was going to draw the number 12 and so was Helga. _Clever, David._ Unlike the other students, Lila occasionally had reason to call her teachers by their first name. Like when she was uncovering their secrets as Fuzzy Slippers.

Helga walked around the front of LIla and noisily turned her former neighbor's desk around, then swung one long gangly leg into the seat to face her. She slapped the packet down and started running her finger down the lines, browsing the poetry selections and the rubric.

"So whatcha thinking, figure if he's got some Whitman in here it's an easy A, Oswald's a sucker for that Mystic Masculinity stuff," Helga started off. "Or Plath, since he's got such a boner for her."

"Please, Helga, there's really no reason to be vulgar here. Let's just select a poem that resonates with us."

"Fuck that, and fuck you, I'll be vulgar if I want. I'm not interested in resonating with this project, Mr. Oswald, or especially _you._ Just want my easy A we can crank out in one weekend so I can goof off the other two."

Lila pressed the paper on her desk with her hands firmly, scowling openly. Helga, much like Arnold, was one of the only people that really ruffled her.

"Fine, if that's what you want, ending this partnership quickly is ever so fine with me. What are you preferences, I'll mark them on the sheet."

"Let's see, Whitman, obviously, number 1. Plath, 2. And, let's see….oh, shit, here we go! Shelley, 3. No, wait, 1. Bump Walt and Sylvia down a notch."

Lila sighed and wrote down their preferences, then corrected them, then wrote them down again. She wrote their names on the top of the sheet, feeling a little loathsome that her name was next to Pataki's. It wasn't that she _hated_ her. She just pitied her. And pity was a disgusting emotion to LIla.

She handed off the sheet to Mr Oswald, who took it and whispered "Good luck, Ms. Sawyer" with a mischievous glimmer in his eye.

_David, please, do not cast such impish looks my way,_ she groaned inwardly as she returned to her desk. _Not after what you did with last year's valedictorian._ Lila had dirt on Mr. Oswald, too. Of course she did! But she wouldn't use it, not without a really big reason. It was the kind of leverage that ended careers, maybe even lives. She didn't need that type of leverage. Yet.

"So, since it's _Ozymandias,_ I figure we'll knock this out this weekend, what's your guess, Sawyer?"

"Please call me Lila, Helga. I think that with your expertise and my familiarity with Mr. Oswald's preferred method of poetic analysis and discussion, I'm ever so sure that we'll be able to finish this weekend without any problems."

"Killer. Brainy and I got band practice most of the weekend, but we can meet somewhere Saturday afternoon and get this knocked out. Don't forget or fuck this up, I want that A."

"I'll take it seriously, so I just hope that you will, too."

Helga tilted up one of her big black eyebrows, looking Lila up and down in the way she used to when she was actually frightening to Lila. She used to be able to send a little shiver down her spine with a glance, or make her dread going to school if she and Arnold were fighting. Now, Lila felt like she was sitting across from an unloaded gun. It was dangerous _in theory._

"I take everything seriously. Even slacking off. When I slack off, I _seriously_ slack off. So don't worry your pretty little head and those adorable pigtails about me."

_How boring. _Lila finished writing her notes for the project, and picked up her notebook to take with her as she handed their packet in. As she stood up, one of Arnold's letters and the accompanying photo of him spilled out of the loose pages, sliding in front of Helga in naked slow motion.

Helga stared at what she saw while Lila held her breath, sure as she was ever sure that Helga would blow up in fury.

Instead, she slowly lifted the picture of him, eyes wide, and seemed to lose herself in the sun-kissed messy hair, the easy smile. His teenage appearance must have been a shock for her. Still so good looking, but just a bit sturdier and more dependable from a few years of wild adventure.

"Arnold's sure doing well down there." Helga put the picture down and mechanically pushed away from the desk, leaving it behind on her way to the classroom door. Lila detected no emotion. Nothing but a statement. It sounded haunting and hollow.

_She's hardened her heart so thoroughly_, Lila observed with a bit of sadness. The strength of her own emotional reaction surprised and disappointed Lila, who had thought she had written Helga off for good. Worse still, she _hated_ being directly to blame for another person's misery - at least, while they also knew she was to blame. It was less a conflict of conscience, and more of a discomfort with culpability. The whole situation made her rather disconcerted, and it was an unwelcome sensation.

She was left with that vaguely unsettling feeling until the weekend came, and she was forced to confront Helga in close quarters again, unbalanced and vaguely unsure how she should proceed with her former friend.

* * *

Lila's bangs blew messily in the sudden cold blast of air in the handicap-accessible walkway from the red-eye flight she took to Hillwood first thing in the morning. The kind steward carried her carry-on bags, which stuffed to capacity represented the whole of her current belongings not boxed up in her childhood home, put up for sale. She was mostly silent the entire flight, nursing a killer hangover and the results of last night's bourbon binge. She was sure she looked a fright, but, how she looked mattered precisely dick all when compared to the work she had left to be done.

For starters, she had to come to terms with the facts: Arnold and Helga had most likely reconciled, possibly while in severe states of inebriation, and were almost definitely hooking up. A lifetime of romantic and sexual tension built up to a crescendo by Helga's re-ignited passions, and expressed by means of extremely powerful music were not likely to end in a chaste evening. Lila could handle the fact that Arnold's flesh had most likely given in to the temptation. She could even handle the fact that Arnold probably _thought_ he was in love with her still and that this was the right thing to do for his happiness. She was even ready to accept that maybe he was right.

But she wouldn't accept a damn thing without a fight. That's not who she was. Lila Sawyer didn't bow out gracefully for _anyone_, she would only accept total defeat. She wouldn't concede until every last trick and weapon she had at her disposal as Fuzzy Slippers was exhausted and Arnold remained lost. She owed it to herself, but more than that, she respected Helga enough, she would offer nothing less.

Lila reflected on her relationship with the troubling young woman as she rode the elevator down to the baggage claim and her waiting taxi. Lila and Helga had been rivals in one way or another multiple times. First, when Helga had gone to such extreme and remarkable lengths just to get to kiss Arnold in their school play, Lila had seen a girl with such fierceness and strength that she would take risks Lila would never consider just to get a little closer to someone she cared about. Lila liked Helga right away. She had always felt bad, then, that Arnold had fallen for her instead of noticing Helga's affections and seeing through the obvious bullying and bravado. Truthfully, that more than anything else had driven her to not care as much for Arnold as she might have otherwise.

She had assumed their rivalry ended when Arnold left their town, and Helga gave up. She, of course, discovered in high school that Helga never really gave up, just forced herself to try. Without success, but, the effort was remarkable just the same. If it hadn't been for their meddlesome English teacher, she would never had the opportunity to discover just what lengths Helga had gone to in her attempt to murder her heart. Again, Lila was awed with Helga's private strength.

Now, she was forced to go up against that strength in earnest. It would be her life's challenge. The thought made her headache much worse.

She made a mental inventory of her action items once she arrived at her destination. Her Big Sis had been overjoyed to hear that Lila would be making a surprise visit first thing in the morning, and made arrangements with Miriam without delay. That was the obvious first step, simply make her presence in Hillwood known, and especially make it known with whom she was staying.

Second, she had to immediately shift blame for the picture that was distributed by Rhonda to the actual source. It wouldn't work if people thought Fuzzy Slippers was actually going after Helga directly, but it did serve her purposes to make people suspect it at first. Once Rhonda fessed up - and she would, no question - the appearance of the _real_ Fuzzy Slipper's handiwork would send everyone into a panic.

That was where her opportunity lied. Throw questions into everyone's memories. Force confrontations that had remained un-approached for a decade. Unearth ancient grudges; reinvigorate quelled rivalries; enflame forbidden and secret affairs. Hillwood was about to get significantly more interesting, Lila mused, now that the status quo was about to be disturbed by her ministrations once again.

Her hand squeezed the little black book she had kept through the years reflexively, keeping the precious object close and safe. She once again silently praised her foresight in having kept two copies, and the brilliant masterstroke of simply letting one of them fall into Gerald and Phoebe's hands. Their pursuit had been cunning, troublesome, and admirable. It was also really futile. She had engineered their every success herself. Oh, Pheobe and Gerald had certainly found ways to _surprise_ and _challenge_ her, of course. They weren't stupid, far from it, but the fact they were smart was also one of the things she used to manipulate them.

When you got to Lila's level, even your strengths became your weaknesses.

She sat outside the baggage claim gate, looking haggard in the dress she fell asleep in the night before, patiently awaiting the person who would be picking her up. One of her weapons, in fact.

Nadine walked out of the airport in stylish sunglasses, rolling a suitcase behind her. She saw Lila, her pencil thin eyebrows arching up on her high, noble forehead. A smile creased in her golden brown features, and the tall, braided girl approached Lila's wheelchair with a quick step.

"Girl, you look like shit. Did whatever put you in that chair also fuck up your hair?" Nadine grinned, setting her bag down to stoop for a hug.

Lila squeezed Nadine's shoulders with the strength she could muster on less than four hours of sleep and a massive hangover, and let herself laugh.

"Actually, yes, and I'm here to see him. I'm so happy you could come."

"For Lila Sawyer, I can make the uncomfortable trip back home." She stood back up, tall, lean, and with an energy in her muscles that made it seem like she was always about to bolt.

"I hope ever so much it won't be _too_ uncomfortable, Nadine. That's not why I called you to come to Hillwood., to put you through a ringer of emotional distress" Yes, in fact, it actually was.

"Yeah, yeah, but, there's always gonna be bad blood in this town. Just hope I can avoid most of it."

"That's not likely, I'm afraid." Lila readied herself to arm the first weapon she had loaded. She needed to get Rhonda so thoroughly under her control that her actions would be precisely accurate to Lila's needs. Nadine was the leverage she acquired for that purpose.

"Fuck me, I was afraid of that. Okay, Sawyer. What's the score?"

Lila's taxi van drove up, a little ahead of schedule. She frowned. She hated when her timetables were disturbed. She was still perfectly capable of winging it.

"Where are you staying? You should ride with me, we can discuss it on the way."

"I'm just in the Stinton Hotel downtown. I'd love a ride, thanks."

The driver from the taxi assisted Lila with her bags, and after a brief wait she was in the van, hands folded in her lap. Nadine kept the conversation moving.

"You staying with Arnold?"

Lila's hands twisted a little tighter in her lap, and she shook her head. "No, I wont be at the boarding house. I'm staying with friends."

"Who? Rhonda?"

_Oh, Nadine. _She was, unfortunately, a little transparent. After she managed to grab herself a semester studying abroad, Nadine had simply never come back. The timing was singular, if you knew the whole story the way Lila did. And the way Rhonda did. Now, the successful photographer lived in Philadelphia, and had her work printed in a few magazines. Life had been decent to Nadine after she left Hillwood. One of the few success stories, in fact. It was a shame, Lila thought, that the circumstances of her leaving had to be so painful.

"No, I'm staying with Olga and Miriam."

"_The Patakis?_" Nadine gawked with an open-mouth grin, then shook her head. "That's brave. Or stupid."

"I count Olga as one of my very best friends, and Miriam is ever so sweet." Lila believed what she said. She felt very protective over the Pataki family - at least, the half of it that she liked. She hated when people called Miriam a drunk, or Olga unhinged, or any of the other nasty things that Helga - and she - had to endure in high school.

"Yeah, sure, but they're pretty damn _loco_ if you ask me." The look on Lila's face must have clearly said that she hadn't asked, so Nadine backtracked. "Ah, but, you know, what do I know, I haven't been back in years. Sorry, Lila."

"It's quite alright, you didn't hurt my feelings. But I'm sure they would be hurt if they heard how you feel."

"Yeah, you're right. It was out of line. I'll, uh, send them a postcard."

Lila knew that was a lie. Nadine shifted and cleared her throat to slice through the uncomfortable pause. "So, uh, the plan?"

Lila smiled and nodded. _Oh yes, the plan,_ she indulged in the satisfaction she got from people asking _her_ for the next step. "Well, you came back for a reason, yes? Not just because I asked for help."

Nadine nibbled on her lower lip and looked troubled. She finally fell forward in her seat, hunched over her knees, and heaved a huge frustrated sigh. "_Augh!_ Yes, I did. I have unfinished business. You know I do."

"Well, why don't you just take care of your unfinished business, then?"

Nadine rose up, looking at Lila with curiosity while her braids fell back into place over her shoulders and her face. "Wait, you don't need me to do anything?"

"I'm ever so sure that I just asked you to do something, Nadine."

"That's it? Just...go talk to Rhonda?" Nadine was appropriately cautious. It's rare that you get a late night call from an old, old friend you haven't seen in years; it's even rarer they request using irresistible methods that you spare no expense to meet them in the hometown you fled in disgrace said years ago. To think the request came with no strings attached was naturally suspicious.

"For now, anyway, yes. I think that's the best course of action - for you. You can't really be a lot of help for me until you get the closure you need anyway." A lie, and Lila told it confidently. It was far simpler. All she called Nadine down to Hillwood to do was to talk to Rhonda. Whatever happened in the aftermath of that would serve her purposes regardless of the outcome. Lila found it was easiest to get people to do your dirty work if they already intended on doing it in the first place.

Of course, it was Lila who got Rhonda involved anyway, with her late night tipsy phone call. Rhonda's furious reaction and subsequent meddling was intended. Both moves were valid; one was just misdirection, and the second was to exert control. Lila wasn't playing around this time. There would be an aftermath in her wake, and people would get hurt. She would guide them to the conflicts they were already poised to have, but bent towards her own ends. Nadine and Rhonda weren't exactly innocent, either.

Nadine seemed to process what she must have thought was a reasonable point. Lila tried to look composed despite the throbbing in her forehead, and said as little as possible to keep the nausea rolling in her abdomen quieted.

Finally, when they arrived where Nadine was staying, she decided to speak.

"I don't really get this, you could call in that favor basically any time. For anything. Just having me come here and...finish my unfinished business, I don't know. It seems like it's either too nice of you, or maybe something else."

Lila looked patiently back at Nadine from her wheelchair, hands relaxed in their folded spot in her lap. She didn't offer a rebuttal.

"But, that's not really any of my concern, I guess. Thanks for the lift, Lila. I'll call you to tell you how it goes - once I get checked in I am just going to get this over with."

"Rhonda will be with Sid across town, I'd start with the hookah lounge on Harbor Street. He sells to the owner of the shop, so they'll likely have the place to themselves for her to do her work."

Nadine flicked a smirk onto her cheeks, shaking her head. "I'd ask how you know that, but I probably don't wanna know. Oh hey! Also, that reminds me, there's this great exhibit in Philly, the Giant Beetles of South America. You should bring Arnold when all this is done and check it out! I know the entomologist who curated the collection, kind of a funny girl. Cute, too."

Lila nodded. "That sounds ever so interesting. I'm sure when all this is over, Arnold and I will be glad to make a stop in Philly. To show our thanks, if nothing else."

"Alright," Nadine hoisted her bag and stepped out of the taxi. She lingered at the door, putting her hand in her short khaki jacket pocket and pulling out her cell phone. "Let's synchronize our watches." She grinned at Lila, sounding far too playful for the misery she was likely about to go through.

"See you soon, Nadine." Lila calmly replied, and Nadine shut the van door. The van pulled away, and Lila closed her eyes to try to get a moment's rest before they arrived at Miriam and Olga's flat.

* * *

Lila dreaded the coming few hours. Hosting Helga in her bedroom for a school project was one of a handful of things she never wanted to have to endure.

And yet as she hurriedly scampered back and forth in her home, making sure that nothing was out of place, and that her room in particular looked spotless and pure, she also had to admit that she was a little excited. Lila had friends over often, but a rival was a rare visitor. It was her chance to sharpen her claws, so to speak, and make sure that her polish was still flawless as ever.

"Okay, everything seems to be in order," she murmured to herself, straightening the daisy yellow dress she chose to wear. This level of preparation was normal for people that were coming over, but Lila was particularly careful to make sure that she was emotionally guarding herself as well. Arnold was going to come up. That wasn't even in question, and it wouldn't do to get caught off guard when Helga inevitably started asking questions.

Lila intended to use this opportunity to put an end to their rivalry once and for all. Not out of any ill will, but, she truly felt it was best for Helga to give Arnold up. She couldn't win, and the sooner that the nail was in the coffin, the sooner Helga might be able to find true happiness. Lila even entertained the possibility of a future in which they became friends, once the Arnold problem was no longer between them.

_Not likely, _she admitted, pouring herself some iced tea while she waited for the troubling Pataki girl to show up. _But it's nice to hope._

Helga's knock was sudden and irreconcilably obnoxious. Lila sighed and went to answer the door, sure this was going to be interesting in the very least of her expectations.

"Sup, Sawyer, nice place." Helga stood on the stoop, messenger bag at her hip, looking disinterestedly at Lila's building and past her through the doorway.

"Good afternoon, Helga, I appreciate you being on time ever so much. Please, come in." Lila escorted the tall, lanky blonde to their living room, where she had some iced tea in a big sun pitcher beaded with condensation appealingly on a small tray with an empty mason jar for her guest. Helga noticed the spread, whistled, and dropped her bag where she stood in the entryway.

"Is that some of your sweet tea? _Nice_, I am totally jazzed to have some. You may not be much to look at, but you brew a mean sweet tea." Helga stalked into the room, flopping in an empty chair and kicking a leg over one arm. "So considerate of you, and so refined."

Lila smiled and ignored the sarcasm and the way Helga was treating her furniture, and poured the tall girl a big healthy glug of her sweet tea, handing her the mason jar. Hega took a big drink right away, and Lila moved back to the entryway to pick up her bag, and brought it into the room with her.

"Now that you're refreshed, we should get started." Lila was eager to get the work done so that she could get on with her day, and meet whatever drama Helga would bring to her head on.

Luckily for her, Helga wasn't in any mind to waste time. The two of them cracked into their poem, _Ozymandias,_ and had a workable draft of a fairly thorough analysis written within an hour. With Helga rattling off ideas with an expert's eye, and Lila's attention to detail and precise rhetoric, they were sure to get an A. This suited them both just fine. It wasn't lost on Lila that, when they both had an interest in the notion, the two of them worked together extremely well. Lila wasn't sure, but she felt it was likely due to the fact that they had very similar areas of interest, were approximately as smart as one another, and had, deep down, a lot in common with the way they approached the world.

Lila was caught by Helga staring at her thoughtfully. Helga was staring back, looking slightly annoyed back at Lila from over the bridge of her upturned nose.

"You know, I don't like you _either,_ Sugarboobs. No need to stare me down, the message is clear." Helga's voice was almost tired, as if she was expecting this to happen, but weary that it had.

Lila felt embarrassment that the things she was thinking apparently found their way to her features in her reverie. Lila was a woman of superlative emotional control, but she wasn't perfect. Things got through, often at inopportune times.

"Helga, I'm ever so sure I don't know what you mean, I was simply lost in thought-" Lila started to explain.

"Yeah, no, you had a pretty fuckin' nasty scowl going on, but that's okay. I get it. The feeling's mutual, kiddo. Hate your guts, hate you to death. Every breath drawn is in antithesis to yours. But, hey, we're pretty much adults here. No reason we can't just be civil and get through this and then go back to pretending the other person doesn't exist."

Lila found herself with the confusing sensation of being genuinely hurt. She knew Helga considered her a rival. She wasn't prepared to hear that Helga hated her, and in such florid language.

"Helga, I like you." Lila offered up the truth.

Helga's eyes did the rolling thing, and she leaned back on a knifelike elbow, stirring her sweet tea with a long finger. "No need to lie to my face. Believe it or not, I'm not going to haul off and hit you. I'm not the same violent psychopath I was in elementary school."

"No, Helga, really. I don't hate you." She felt she might as well tell the whole truth. It wouldn't hurt anything. "I'm just ever so sad for you, and think you're a disappointment. But I don't hate you."

"A _disappointment?!_" The shock in Helga's voice trembled into the hint of fury. "Who the fuck do you think you are?!" Real anger now. "Helga G. Pataki is _not_ a disappointment by _any_ standard of measurement!"

"Well, since you asked, and if you must know, I'll gladly tell you. But can you please calm your tone down first, it's ever so threatening and I'm afraid it's made me just the smallest bit uncomfortable."

"Fuck off, Lila. Uncomfortable? You just called me a disappointment!"

"And you just said you hated me, and that every breath you draw is in antithesis of mine."

Helga quieted down, intense blue eyes burning with a barely contained fury."

"That's right. I did say that," she finally admitted. "What of it?"

Lila searched Helga's angry scowl for something. "Well, why on earth do you hate me ever so much?" There it was. She'd had her answer, and much more. Lila was right to mentally prepare for a confrontation with Helga about Arnold; inadvertently, it had prepared her for a rather uncomfortable conversation about _her_ instead.

Helga seemed outraged that she would even be challenged in her feelings. Lila imagined it was something simple, something like _my feelings are my own and who are you to question them._ A simple, unexamined gut response to stimulus, carried with absolute conviction and armored with the invincible idea of being correct. She started to talk a few times, each instance stopping short to growl and hem and haw. She finally stood up, and paced the room like a wild, cornered animal. She clearly wanted to unleash, to let fly, but something was keeping her in check.

With a shock, Lila realized that Helga was keeping _herself_ in check.

Finally, Helga turned on Lila, pointing a finger at chest level and defiantly making her bold declaration.

"Ever since you moved to Hillwood, I've been up against you! Pretty, popular Lila, so sweet and proper with your _ever so_ and _I'm so sure_. Never makes mistakes, perfect marks in school, beloved by all! Lila, Lila, _Lila!_"

"Certainly I have never made a comparison between us, Helga. Do you think it's fair to resent me for something you imagined?"

"Fair?! Imagined! Oh ho, that's good, that's rich. You think it was lost on me who stayed with Miriam and Olga after the divorce?! You think I don't hear your name every goddamn time I visit? I am sick to death of your presence. You chafe me wherever I turn. You never had to make a comparison between us; everyone else already does it for you. I'm second best or last when measured up to you, even with Arno-" Helga slapped a hand over her mouth and turned away.

_There it is. _Lila girded herself in all her cunning, ready to put an end to this once and for all.

"Arnold? Surely you don't mean you're second best with him."

"I never said Arnold, I was saying...'or not!' Yeah, I was being sarcastic. What does _football head_ have to do with anything! Stop changing the subject."

Lila wore her least impressed look. "You can't fool me. Everyone at Hillwood knows how you feel about him, but I was one of the first."

Helga shook with fury, defeated for the moment. Her tone became more shrill. Familiar. "And so what! So what if they all know about some old stupid crush that doesn't even matter anymore!"

"I should say, Helga, that we are getting closer and closer to why I said what I did-but your deceit rings empty to me. Arnold cares about you, ever so much. After all, that tender moment you two shared in the jungle, and then all the _letters_ you write to each other-"

"What the fuck are you talking about." Helga interrupted, looking more distressed than angry.

Lila had her. The knife was in, all she had to do was twist it. "The letters you two exchange, I'm sure there's overflowing with sweet nothings of shared affection and mutual adoration. It's ever so romantic, really, Helga, there's no need to be shy."

Helga's face was a mask, a featureless space where the rather pretty girl's unique expressions usually danced. "He tell you that, did he? In the letters he writes you?"

"Well, no, he never mentions you at all," Lila lied, and planted the fatal seed. "But surely I'm not wrong. It's okay, Helga, if you two are in some kind of ever so sweet long distance commitment, I think that's oh so special! You don't see love like that every day."

"Shut up." Helga's voice was trembling, she was looking away.

"What do you mean? Is...am I wrong? Are you two not speaking?" Lila carefully sculpted the concern and mock ignorance in her voice. It helped that Helga refused to even glance in her direction, her whole body clenched and shaking. "You _did_ write him back, right? Helga, right? You wrote him back?"

"Shut UP, Sawyer, I swear to fucking God if you speak one more sentence about Arnold I-"

"Don't threaten me in my own house, you coward." Lila's tone totally changed, all the false concern gone. It was enough of a sting to snap Helga's eyes upward. They were red from stress.

"_What_ did you say to me?"

Lila stared her down, standing up. "You are my _guest_ and I will not be _threatened_ by someone without the guts to write Arnold _back_."

Helga was astonished, staring at Lila like she was an alien. Of course, Lila was making a gamble. A calculated risk, designed to totally unbalance Helga and reveal her true, inner self. Nobody had seen it before. Not even Arnold. The experience was shocking because of its scarcity.

"I thought that naturally, Helga Pataki is writing Arnold letters. He told me he wrote you, he still tells me he writes you. He tells me he writes you a _lot._ I never in all my years ever imagined that Helga Geraldine-"

"_Who told you my middle name!"_ Helga shrieked.

"Helga _Geraldine_ Pataki wouldn't be able to write _Arnold back._" Lila found that the anger in her throat was real. That fact surprised her. She barely had time to think before her real thoughts started to pour out, enveloped in sincere emotion. "I won't have threats of violence in _my_ home from you. You didn't even write him _back?!_" Her volume rose, and Lila was shaking. Part of her was screaming to get back in control, but it was too late.

Helga's jaw was moving, and she clearly had something to say back, but Lila tore in.

"ForGET him. You _lost_ him. Arnold writes you for years and years, and you offer his homesick, lonely heart a wall of impenetrable silence. The _selfishness_ of you. How ever so cowardly. And how _disappointing_."

Helga finally got it. She stood ramrod straight, hands clenched into white balls of hate. Lila stared back at her, hands held at her sides.

"You're right." Lila felt herself smile with satisfaction. "I am a coward. I can't write him back, and I never did. I wanted to. I tried. But," Helga lifted a finger and pointed squarely at Lila's heart. "He's with his _parents_ living his life-long dream. Last thing that kid said to me? That perfect, sweet, darling boy, blameless and pure?"

Lila felt her heart tighten in her chest. She was not prepared to hear something intimate between them.

"He said, 'I may be leaving Hillwood behind, but I'll always take a piece of it with me.' He's looking _back_. Regrets. Second thoughts. We are an anchor around his neck, a big fat speed bump in his new life. I may be a _coward_, but at least I'm not _selfish._"

Helga grabbed her back, and bolted out the front door, slamming it behind her. Lila's jaw snapped shut, and she felt herself blinking and reeling from the encounter. She heard faint shriek from the street outside the house, and then, empty silence filled the space where Helga once stood.

* * *

Lila shakily stood under the hot cascade of the shower, bracing herself on the handicapped railing and trying to enjoy the soothing heat of the water on her tired face and her unsteady limbs. Getting into showers was one of her least favorite new struggles since her accident, but she was thankful that she could at least manage to stand on her own after many weeks of intense physical therapy. Her therapist even said she might be able to fully manage a walk in a few years, though she would always have to walk with assistance and would never regain full movement.

_It was an easy price to pay_, she remembered the wet, doll-limp form of Arnold against the waterfall cliffs, looking broken and small against the jungle background. Even in the memory of that grim scene, Lila felt her stomach flip and her heart sicken. Putting a hand up on the cool tile next to the faucet, the girl recalled the slippery, mossy surface of the rock wall she scaled, heard the roaring rush of a river freefalling next to her ears in the insistent hissing crash of the showerhead. Everything in that memory moved too fast to recall, all movement and rushing and the sick cold panic in her guts that she had actually lost something important to her.

Arnold lived. He earned a nasty wine-hued scar that traced in inner thigh and hip, and a long lifetime of survivor's guilt, but he lived. Lila was so thankful when she woke up in her hospital bed to his worried face, free of the hideous dreams where the last thing she saw was his still, shattered body.

Lila turned the faucet off, squeaking the knob to manual tightness, and the rush of the shower quieted to the gentle gasp of the bathroom vent and heater. She carefully moved herself around the swing-arm of the special assistance tub, and sat on the wheelchair where her towel was laid out in advance. She learned early on that little tricks to make the dressing and cleaning process easier went a long way. It helped that her hosts were the ever so considerate and helpful Olga and Miriam.

She finally rolled herself into the guest bedroom where she was staying, her clothes laid out on the floral-printed duvet of the spacious double bed. Even though the two women lived in extremely tight, humble means, they didn't compromise in the decoration of their living space. Lila liked that, she respected it. Their tenacity in the face of the monstrous lousy luck that bastard Bob Pataki dealt them was heroic in Lila's eyes.

Lila lay on the bed next to her clothes, still in her towel, staring up at the ceiling and lost in thought.

_Helga is more worthy of my admiration than my enmity,_ she realized. _She was as wrong as wrong could be, but stuck in her ways or not she managed the impossible. _Lila respected a strong opponent. They were rare. Where Lila was locked in an endless scheme, moving plots within plots and keeping herself in check through a myriad of veiled identities and mimed personalities, Helga was _Helga._ She had nefarious plots, oh ever so many of them, and in their childhood Lila learned more about how to effectively plot and ploy than anywhere else. But the difference between them was philosophical; where Helga hid herself and her truest passions from a place of protective fear of others, Lila obscured her true personality beneath a blanket of existential terror.

Rarely had she ever had to address the basic lack of security in her own heart. Arnold was not an anchor for her, more of a beacon. A chance to love someone simply. To love and not be needed. To love with her whole self, without restriction, and with no need for hidden motives and masks. If she won, she would have to tell him everything eventually. Well, almost everything. He would get a _tailored version_ of the truth, one that fit her new narrative better and allowed their love room to blossom without the troublesome details of the past.

She longed to simply return to when she was that drunk teenager in the barn with her first true love again. She held the memory of her kiss with Arnold that night with overzealous fervor. There would be hell to pay for anyone that jeapordized her opportunity to return to that simple feeling. _The absence of complication._

She had invented herself from an idea. Lila Sawyer existed as a construct of her own making. She would do anything to escape her creation. She would destroy everyone in her way, if necessary.

When Lila was done, Hillwood would never be the same again.


	13. Chapter 13 - Waiting on the Feathers

A/N: Another chapter in the ongoing saga. I'm really quite sure this is going to be a beast of a story when it's all said and done. Those of you who have stayed on for the long haul, thank you! We'll have a chapter or two before we can get back to Helga and Arnold in the present. Thanks for your patience and continued support!

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 13: Waiting on the Feathers and Tar

"It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness." - Leo Tolstoy, _The Kreutzer Sonata_

* * *

Phoebe sat with her lunch bento untouched on the bench she and Gerald usually ate at, mind working too fast to pay any heed to her boyfriend rattling off a story about the varsity basketball team's latest victory. He was chewing a slice of cold pizza in between animatedly and enthusiastically detailing offensive drives and streaks, and the drama of a personal foul shot at the last few seconds of the game. It probably would have been interesting from a perspective of appreciating a good drama, like Phoebe did, if she wasn't so utterly consumed with the greater puzzle and threat facing their high school in Fuzzy Slippers.

The smartest girl in their junior year found herself stymied to no end by the ever elusive, especially dangerous and cruel figure. Phoebe had been struggling to piece together the seemingly random clues and bits of information that she and Gerald had scrounged up together for years now. Ever since their class entered high school, the figure of Fuzzy Slippers had been running roughshod over the romantic and social lives of everyone at the school. Even the teachers and faculty had felt the barbed sting of the rumor-mongering entity, and yet nobody had any clue at all who Fuzzy Slippers could possibly be.

That's not to say that Phoebe didn't have a list of potential suspects.

Things had gotten intense with the rumor mill and the unceasing hunger for drama their friends seemed to have. She had been up late nights working on this puzzle like a woman possessed, on top of college prep courses and her own rigorous study habits. In the end, Phoebe Heyerdahl was exhausted. Gerald's voice was a distant sound she knew was happening around her, but she was simply too tired to pay him any heed.

"And then Sid takes the jump shot," Gerald spread his arms wide for effect, pantomiming the arc of the ball through the air.

"Mhm," Phoebe responded automatically, staring at the pickled plum in her rice.

"...And then Bigfoot just SLAPS the ball outta the air!" Gerald slapped his hand down on the bench loudly, startling Phoebe into awareness. "Two yetis and a wendigo carried Sid screaming off into the sky."

Phoebe blinked and scrunched her nose up, confused. "Sorry, what?" Bigfoot and yetis?"

"Baby girl I have been spinning one hell of a yarn for about five minutes. You missed it when 300 Spartans held off our three pointers at the Hot Gates, and then six or seven Draculas swooped in to personal foul our whole team."

"I, what? Gerald are you feeling well?"

"I should be asking YOU that question. I basically started making ridiculous stuff up to see if you would notice. All you did was agree with me, 'Mhm,' and 'Of course.' You okay?"

Phoebe rubbed her eyes underneath her stylish cat-eye glasses. "No, Gerald, I am probably suffering the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation, layered generously on a variety of stress factors that contribute to an overall malaise and inattentiveness. I'm sorry."

Gerald shrugged his shoulders, taking another bite of pizza and talking around the mouthful he chewed. Phoebe always found Gerald's table manners to be less than pristine, and normally the annoyance would be easily shrugged off. Today, it just bugged her.

"Ain't a big deal, Pheebs, it was just a game. I'm more worried you are gonna burn out, all used up. Candles burning at both ends snuff out faster, you know."

"Your concern is sweet. Finish chewing before you tell me sweet things, Gerald, or they lose impact." She smiled as gently as her impatience and fatigue would allow.

"Oh my bad," he apologized with a mouthful again, then struggled the large amount of food down in a hasty chew. He sipped from his coke greedily to wash it down, then continued their conversation. "But really, don't you think you should take a break from all this Fuzzy Slippers nonsense?"

"I can't in good conscience take a break when our mysterious opponent is unchecked to wreak as much damage as he or she has the inclination."

"Well they ain't exactly unchecked, we've been dogging them for months. Years, even."

"With very little to show for our efforts, I'm afraid. And it feels like all our gains, however significant they might be in unraveling this mystery, come at too great a cost. Or worse, actually set us back in the end. I've never experienced someone so adept at strategy. I would very much like to get them in front of a Go board, I imagine they have terrifying strength with their level of intelligence."

"I mean, there's nobody at this school smarter than Phoebe Heyerdahl. That's a fact." Gerald pointed at his girlfriend for emphasis.

"Intelligence is subjective and can be measured in a startling variety of methods, Gerald, and I am afraid that in the specific arena of strategic subterfuge and misdirection, our opponent is much more intelligent. Whoever it is has been dancing circles around us with impunity."

Gerald hummed and took another long sip of his soda. Phoebe watched with curious fascination while her boyfriend casually lifted his cell phone above his head to take a selfie mid sip. Gerald had asked her out officially last summer, and she had said yes with gusto. Their relationship blossomed and they became especially close while they worked together to chase down Fuzzy Slippers. Everyone at school was a little envious of either of them. Gerald was one of the most popular guys at school, captain of the basketball team and a star player on their baseball team as well as the shortstop and cleanup batter. He was handsome, funny, charming, and generally had nothing but the best waiting for him. Phoebe, on her part, was certain to be their class' valedictorian, and thanks to her association with Gerald, also very popular. She had a predilection for following Korean fashion trends, and it kept her style unique and fresh, and so she was one of the more well liked "Geeks" at the school. Not that she cared, but, the two of them cut an interesting couple. Phoebe reflected on Gerald's carefree, extremely improvised lifestyle while she watched him take a few more selfies to perfect the shot.

"More social media, Gerald?" She found his habit of plastering his life all over the internet to be a little strange, but, on the internet, too, he found popularity.

"You know it. Ain't nothin' wrong with showing the world how good I look." He flashed her a white smile.

"Your handsomeness is only multiplied when you drink soda, I assure you," she playfully teased him.

"Haha, pretty funny for a geek. You should write comedy. Or better yet-tweet it!"

Phoebe laughed a little and shook her head. She had no use for microblogging, at least nothing she could think of. Why anyone would be interested in what she had to say or where she was at all times of the day-the ghost of an idea suddenly struck her.

"Wait, Gerald, you said before you were 'checking in' to a location on one of our dates. Does that service have some sort of Global Positioning System imbedded?"

"Say what now?"

"GPS. Are you able to track your position using GPS when you post selfies."

"Yeah girl, they got that. Lets all my adoring fans know where they can spot me, candidly enjoying the fine company of my foxy geek."

Phoebe enjoyed his flattery thoroughly. He was just sappy and goofy enough that the sincerity in his compliments touched her. But more importantly, this solidified her idea into a very real plot.

"Gerald, you're wonderful." Her smile was genuine.

"Thanks babe, I know. Why though?"

"We can use your social media presence to our advantage. You're one of the most popular people in our school, and you said most of the student body follows you, yes?"

"You know it, a few of the teachers too. Kinda creepy, though."

"Well, we can probably assume that Fuzzy Slippers, as cunning and well-informed as they are, probably have access to any information you post to social media. Probably to everyone at our school that uses it, in fact!"

"Hey that makes a lotta sense. Damn you're smart as hell." Gerald started to type something on his cell phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Tweeting how smart you are." He smiled at his phone's screen.

"Just as long as your flattery stops short of revealing my idea, thank you. We can feed false information. We can establish a falsified routine, even a pattern of movement. We can feed bad intel to Fuzzy Slippers, counterintelligence meant to put them where we want them, when we want them there!" Phoebe's smile surged on her face. The idea was just clever enough to work.

"Won't that lie to everybody though?"

"Yes, it has to. The idea is no good if even one person other than me or you knows the truth. Nearly anyone can be F.S. _Anyone._"

Gerald nodded slowly, slipping his phone into his pocket.

"You narrow the suspects down at all?"

Phoebe felt the tension in her face and jaw return, and a headache begin to angrily storm around on her brain.

"Unfortunately, the list is still fairly long...we can probably eliminate Helga, however."

"Pataki? You gotta be kidding me. Nobody has a bigger axe to grind with this whole school than her."

Phoebe wished Gerald had more patience for her beleaguered best friend. Helga had simply not been the same since Arnold left and her parents finally went through with the divorce. Now, she was fairly certain that Helga planned to move in with Brainy soon. Her life was distant from Phoebe's own, and it felt impossible to reach her at times.

"Helga is not Fuzzy Slippers." Phoebe was absolutely certain of this as a fact, though the evidence that Helga _was_ the mysterious trouble maker was difficult to ignore. For one thing, Helga had never, not once, been the target of any of Fuzzy Slipper's brutal rumor campaigns. And Phoebe knew for a fact that there was plenty of dirt of the troubled Pataki girl. On top of that, there was a suspicious element of _Arnold_ to the general theme of the various attacks on the students. Even Phoebe had to admit, it was deeply suspicious, and if she didn't know Helga better than anyone else in the world, she would be her primary suspect. Her faith in her friend, however, was stronger than any circumstantial evidence. She would have to see definitive proof, with her own eyes, before she would consider the possibility that Helga was Fuzzy Slippers.

Gerald held eye contact with her for a time, before shrugging and nodding. "Well if you're so certain, it's got to be true. But then who is it? Rhonda?"

"Rhonda's our biggest suspect, but…" Phoebe chewed her thumbnail, unsure if she should tell Gerald the latest piece of intel she had.

"But what? If it's probably Rhonda, we should go after her with your Twitter idea."

Phoebe wondered privately if Rhonda could manage the type of strategic acrobatics necessary to keep her struggling for so long. Pride, a nasty awful wounded pride, refused to believe that Rhonda Wellington-Lloyd could be the deadly foe she had danced with in the shadows of their high school for years. That she had been bested so often, and so thoroughly by someone she considered to be a fairly shallow person.

Plus, it was doubtful Rhonda would attack herself _and_ her best friend Nadine.

"Recent developments point to the strong possibility that Rhonda never was Fuzzy Slippers, and was merely an exceptionally effective smoke screen."

"You're kidding me again. Nobody is a bigger gossip than Rhonda, not even Fuzzy Slippers. Damn you know what though I am tired as hell of calling this evil super spy asshole that name. I wish I never came up with that stupid code word in preschool."

Phoebe nodded, familiar with the history of the moniker. Gerald had famously used the term for the top secret identity of his playground informant. Back then, it was all harmless neighborhood legends and old wives tales, told boldly and dramatically by Gerald. Everyone assumed it was just a made up person, but Gerald eventually revealed the truth of the original, first Fuzzy Slippers. Someone left notes for him to find, usually in his backpack or locker, with interesting stories. He liked interesting stories. He even volunteered every note he kept to Phoebe when she had to clear Gerald's name. Naturally, when the rumor mill started to turn in High School, with that loaded name attached, everyone assumed it was Gerald at first. Only after he publicly revealed the notes and what he knew did he escape suspicion.

Whoever it was that continued to harass the class of PS118, it was not the original. Handwriting comparisons showed that there was a shift somewhere around when everyone was in middle school. That's when the attacks got a lot nastier, and revealing.

Gerald clearly felt at least partially culpable for the entire affair. Phoebe was sure she would feel the same in his shoes. That just motivated her to end this with even more urgency, to clear Gerald's name and conscience once and for all.

"It's not your fault the perpetrator adopted the childhood codeword you used. If anything, it makes them even more sinister. It was a brilliant feint, and it kept people guessing."

"I wish Arnold was here to help us." Gerald sighed and flopped over onto the bench, face down and arms stretched dramatically in front of him.

Phoebe concurred. Arnold would be at the front of this search, bringing Fuzzy Slippers down and saving the day. It was how everyone remembered him.

"I miss Arnold as well. But we have to focus on the resources we have rather than wish we had better ones."

"Although, if my man Arnold came back it would probably just make things a huge mess by now. Mhm. Just imagine all that...conflict." Gerald shuddered, illustrating his imagined scenario to be quite nightmarish.

Phoebe had to admit, after so much time away, and especially after his letters to Helga had all but stopped, a sudden return would present a whole new set of challenges. However, the more time he spent in the Southern Hemisphere, the more pronounced that troubling effect would be. All of this was hypothetical, however. The odds of Arnold just showing up suddenly were slim to none.

She had to focus on their present scenario, not daydream about possible heroism from their lost friend.

"Gerald, thank you for helping so much." Time to improve the morale of the troops. It helped that Phoebe meant what she said when she praised her boyfriend's assistance. "I know that you also have a personal interest in finding the culprit, but the help you've given has been instrumental. Without you, I don't even know where I would be. Still trying to figure out how to do damage control, given the likelihood that I would be unable to predict Fuzzy Slipper's next steps based on my own limited access to rumors and classroom hearsay."

Gerald looked a little surprised to get praised so suddenly, but smiled wide and easy at her. Phoebe liked when he did that. "Aw, babe, it ain't no thing. I'm just doing the right thing, I guess. I always tried to convince Arnold to just...leave things alone. Let bad things happen to bad people, you know, why stick your neck out for that mess? But, after he left, I just figured _somebody_ got to step in. Might as well be me."

"Yes, and that decision was what made me start to admire you so much," she confessed, a little flush on her almond skin. He reached over and put her small hand in his much bigger one, and smiled.

"Well, babe, let's get started. What's the next step?"

Phoebe took a second to enjoy the feeling of her hand vanishing inside of his, a private flutter in her chest like a small bird attempting to escape its cage. If he kept being so sweet, figuring this out would be easy.

* * *

Phoebe grunted, pulling the bookcase up from the floor with Brainy's help and pushing it flush against their wall. A handful of records that hadn't yet fallen free of the lower shelves shifted and slid paper-like onto the floor with small slaps against one another. She wiped her forehead free of matted bangs that clung with sticky sweat to her eyebrows and cheeks, flushed from the hours of exertion in the cleanup. In almost complete silence the two of them had managed to get most of the damage sorted, and to a layperson examining the living room of Helga and Brainy's shared apartment space, it would likely seem as if a very messy person had lived here. Barely any evidence of a catastrophe lingered at all.

Brainy lowered himself to the floor a pace or two away from the shelves, sitting near the bulk of the records that fanned out haphazardly along the floor, scattered in disaster by Helga's fury. He pulled an empty milk crate from the wreckage and started to carefully stack album after album, meticulously gathering the last vestiges of chaos, applying order to the remains.

Phoebe took his cue, noting that he wasn't taking the time to organize anything quite yet. She wondered if that was a special activity he did with Helga, who she knew took enormous pride in their collection. It must have been extremely traumatic for Brian to watch her nearly destroy it all.

Brian pulled a broken vinyl out of a sleeve, frowning at the snapped black disc and tossing it to the side along with the cover to be disposed of.

"It doesn't appear that too many of your records suffered irreparable damage, which is fortunate considering the violence of their dispersal," Phoebe cracked the pregnant silence with her observation. Brian nodded noncommittally. The stack of broken and badly damaged records was relatively small, but still growing. Phoebe internally winced every time Brian threw another to join the casualties.

"Brian you know, it may seem impertinent of me, but," she began, wishing to reach out to her friend who was so obviously suffering through these events alone. "If you ever wanted to talk to me, about Helga I mean, I am here and willing to listen."

Brian's shoulders bobbed once with a little laugh, his face showing a tired half-smile. There was no humor in his eyes while he looked at a first printing of a Swans album, in enough pieces that it was pointless to lament its destruction. Phoebe felt awfully for him, and the urge to try to bandage his wound was so strong within her. She'd always known that Brian had been in love with Helga, ever since they were little kids. Only a blind idiot, or Arnold, wouldn't notice that Brian was literally always around Helga. When they moved in together, Phoebe was partially horrified, and partially relieved. She was sure that the almost hedonistic Helga wouldn't be able to resist Brian's constant supportive, extremely available, and rather quite uniquely handsome presence entirely. Maybe she hadn't, Phoebe wasn't sure, and wouldn't pry.

But she was always worried that something like this would inevitably happen. Helga was singularly focused, to put it politely, on Arnold, and it was extremely unlikely that anything besides the complete victory in winning his heart would satisfy her. Even _that_ might not be enough, she mused, now that Lila was still definitely a part of Arnold's life. She knew Helga, she would require absolute victory to be satisfied, which meant Lila totally divorced from Arnold's interests forever. But this also meant that Brian never really stood a chance.

Even Phoebe's intellectual appreciation for the macabre beauty of a doomed tragic unreciprocated love did nothing to soothe the rankle of bitterness she felt on Brian's behalf. Sympathy, no, empathy filled her guts with acid when she thought about him, loving Helga, alone.

Brian merely nodded to her in response and kept cleaning.

"I know I talk an awfully lot, but perspicacity is one of the things I value the most about myself, and expressing this trait often requires...communication." Phoebe sighed, walking to the fridge. She needed to unwind a little bit. All this tension, all the time, built and escalated to dizzying heights by the whirlwind of Arnold and Helga was frankly fraying her nerves threadbare. She turned away from the fridge with a freshly opened beer to see Brian looking at her with a little bit of surprise.

"What? I drink. I enjoy sake with my father quite often, and the Japanese have a notorious appreciation for an ice cold, face-clenchingly bitter lager." She smirked and nodded Brian's way. "Would you care to join me? We could use a break."

Brian stood up, finally speaking. "God yes."

She tossed him a very cold brown bottle, and they clinked them together on the balcony a short time later.

"Cheers," Brian said, and took a long gulp. He leaned over the railing and looked down into the alley below. The mid-day sun was baking the shadows out of the sidewalk, and the late summer heat was relentlessly encroaching into the living room, making the two of them sweat even with the AC on full blast. Out in the open, though, it seemed kind of refreshing to Phoebe, making her skin aware.

"Cheers indeed," she added, taking a small sip of the bitter drink. She remembered his mouth wound, inflicted by Helga, and regretted offering him the beer. "Are you sure you should be drinking a beer with a mouth wound, though? Alcohol thins the blood."

Brian stuck his tongue out at her. The muscle was red, slightly swollen, and ran through with thick black stitches along the tip. It looked like a nasty wound, and painful.

He shrugged and took another sip, visibly grimacing at the sensation of alcohol on the wound, but, drinking it just the same.

"You know she'll probably move out if Arnold stays." Phoebe remarked, flicking her eyes towards Brian while she tried to gauge his reaction. There was no _probably_ about it. If Arnold moved back to Hillwood, wherever he hung his boots was where Helga would be.

"Yeah, I know," he laughed, and reached into his pocket for a his rolling tobacco. He rolled a cigarette while Phoebe watched, noting the little stains on his fingers where he habitually held his cigarettes. After he licked it closed, lit the end, and took his first drag, he sighed smoke out between his reply. "I hope she does, though."

Phoebe watched him with surprise. Brian wasn't a very talkative person. He definitely never spoke about his feelings to Phoebe before. Maybe he was taking her up on the friendly offer to discuss them?

"I just kind of want this all to be over," he blithely admitted, shrugging his shoulders and taking another drag.

"I can certainly understand that. I imagine this scenario has been one you had dreaded personally for quite some time. Years, perhaps."

"Yep."

"Arnold's return must have been the worst news you could have received that day. I'm very sorry, Brian."

"So you keep saying," he sighed, and rest his head between his arms against the railing, his long, tall frame stooped in the gesture.

"I certainly am sincere. You are my friend too, as I continually assert. I have no desire to see you hurt. I was actually against the idea of you two moving in together," she admitted, hesitating for just a moment before she explained why. "I anticipated that you two getting as close as you have would someday lead to a lot of extremely avoidable heartache."

"Wasn't ever avoidable." Flat. No emotion.

"Why chase her then, continually? For years you got the business end of her fists for your efforts." Phoebe genuinely didn't understand why Brian had been so persistent when for years as kids she must have broken hundreds of pairs of his glassed with her retributive fury.

"We're the same." Brian didn't seem to know how to express what he was feeling. Phoebe could see a sort of agitated anxiety flirting with the corners of his mouth as he considered saying more, but stayed silent.

"You have a lot of similarities, yes, but, that doesn't explain your...your almost obsessive infatuation. I just want to understand, Brian, I'm not criticizing you."

"She and you are friends," he started, slowly. Phoebe nodded at him to continue his point. "She and I are family."

Phoebe at last understood. Brian wasn't just reaching out to Helga out of affection or lust or even the desire for a friend. Brian chased after Helga like a twin follows their other half.

That was all he needed to say. She put her beer down and slid over to hug him, her small arms squeezing around the midsection of his chest. He folded one bony arm around her in reply, and she slipped free.

"If that's the case, and your bond is that strong, then perhaps she won't be your lover or your roommate, but she'll always still be your friend. Don't you think?"

Brian nodded, sadness and acceptance in the weight of his gaze.

Phoebe went back to quietly thinking with her beer at her lips, standing there with Brian, the tension dispelled. Now, they could get back to cleaning as friends. This no longer felt like an imposition, but like cooperation.

It's surprising how much faster work goes when you are no longer anxious in the company you keep. Brian and Phoebe gained more ground in the next hour than they had all morning. Before long, the bookshelves were righted, records sorted, and the carpet vacuumed and looking almost new. Brian's mouth started to swell and hurt worse so they took a break in the kitchen while the afternoon began to burn orange and the day got older.

Brian held an ice pack to his face and swigged a cold beer - the futility of icing himself when he kept exacerbating the problem with alcohol was something Phoebe had already pointed out to him - quiet as always. Phoebe sat in appreciative silence with him, taking her phone out to check up on things.

Phoebe's blood suddenly ran glacial. She felt color drain from her face. Her hand started trembling right away, and her phone clattered to the table, sharply splitting the silence with percussive distress.

Brian looked up at Phoebe and noticed her expression. She was sure it looked fearful.

She pointed at her phone's screen. Her texting app was on display. A massive thread with hundreds of people, replies ranging from outrage and confusion and mockery, some of them recorded as contacts she had in her phone already, the vast majority as anonymous ten digit numbers. Scrolled up to the source of this sudden text-based mass imbroglio, the screen displayed an image that terrified Phoebe.

It wasn't anything too dramatic. Nothing especially disturbing. Sent from a number that registered in Phoebe's phone as "UNKNOWN01" was a high resolution picture of Rhonda and, to Phoebe's shock, Nadine in mid embrace on the balcony of a hotel, faces nearly touching, the distinct curl of a smile across Nadine's visible face. The text plastered over it in huge macro font, however, cause Brainy to stand up in fear and was what provoked such a reaction from Phoebe herself:

"_LOOKS LIKE THE LOVEBIRDS RECONCILED_

TOO BAD THEIR SECRET'S OUT

SHOULDNT HAVE TRIED TO BE SOMEONE YOU'RE NOT, LLOYD

_F.S."_

Phoebe cradled her face with her hands. This was disastrous. Fuzzy Slippers was officially back.

And there would be hell to pay.

* * *

"Whoa, whoa, _whoa_, Pheebs, look! _Look!_" Gerald hissed in a harsh whisper, pulling Phoebe's attention away from her phone to look up through the bushes she and Gerald were crouched within. She looked up in the direction Gerald was gawking at with a series of odd ululating squeaks of surprise and dismay, and felt the sudden impulse to join him in doing her best vocal impression of ambient jungle wildlife.

Lila Sawyer walked into view behind the high school's gym, precisely where they were had led Fuzzy Slippers through a series of extremely clever and convoluted clues through their friend's twitter accounts.

Phoebe was stunned into disbelief. Lila Sawyer? It couldn't be her, it was impossible! And yet, the winsome redhead was stalking surreptitiously in the small alleyway between the gym and the generator building, looking awfully suspicious and especially _sneaky._

"I can't believe it!" Gerald whispered, the force of his surprise almost pushing his voice into actual speaking volume. Phoebe's small hand slipped over his mouth to urge quiet, but he spoke behind it again. "It's Sawyer! How is it possible?"

Phoebe's mind was racing through the facts, trying to piece Sawyer's presence in the alleyway into the overall puzzle of the Fuzzy Slippers problem. The high school junior had never been faced with a fact so incontrovertibly irreconcilable, and yet, the only way Lila could be in this spot at this time was because she was Fuzzy Slippers - or a one in a ten thousand coincidence of galactic proportions.

"Gerald, we don't know for sure. It could be a mistake-" Phoebe whispered back, watching with interest all of Lila's movements. She was surprised at how catlike the country girl was creeping, how light on her flats she seemed.

"Ain't no mistake, Pheebs. We set the bait, this is the trap, and it's sprung. We caught Fuzzy Slippers and it's Lila Sawyer. How the hell did we miss that?"

Phoebe wasn't so sure. Nothing made sense to her in this time; she needed to think.

"Gerald just be quiet for a second, let's watch if she takes the bait further. She could be here by accident."

"You gotta be kidding me she's right there, plain as day and-oh shit!" Gerald shushed up from his urgent whisper-beratement, noticing that Lila was looking right at them. Phoebe was frozen in place, unsure of what to do. Lila held eye contact with her. There was no way she didn't see her.

"Phoebe? Gerald?" Lila called out to them, sounding confused.

Phoebe felt like her heart was about to sever its earthly bonds and escape the cycle of Samsara, lift itself into the heavens and vanish into the blessed void. She was terrified, anxious, had no idea what to do. She felt surprise at the sensation of her legs shakily standing up.

"Th-that's right! It's us." _Not one of my most brilliant Gotcha proclamations_ she mused in a panic, hands fidgeting at her skirt hem.

"The jig's up, Sawyer!" Gerald stood up too, pushing his chest out and seeming a lot braver than he surely must have felt. If they were facing down Fuzzy Slippers, the _real_ Fuzzy Slippers, this was potentially a life ruining encounter.

"Jig? Phoebe? Is this some sort of prank?" She sounded genuinely confused, her voice sweetly lacking guile. "I'm ever so sure I'm lost right now, can you explain what is going on?"

Phoebe and Gerald exchanged glances, both looking as deeply confused as the other.

"Y-you tell us first, Sawyer," Gerald began, strength in his voice waning. "Why are you here?"

"Are you two...having a romantic rendezvous?" Lila's cheeks pinkened, an honest reaction to a legitimately embarrassing thought. It threw Phoebe for a loop.

"N-no! No, no we are most certainly not," Phoebe began hesitantly. She swallowed a bolt of anxiety and pushed on. "Why have you come to this precise point at this precise time? Retrace your steps. How you answer," Phoebe began, her voice lowering and becoming huskily commanding, "might determine your future in this city."

Lila's face screwed up in a half-smile. "Is that a joke? I'm ever so sure I don't follow."

"Just do as she says, Lila, and we can get this all over with."

Phoebe stared hard at Lila while she looked at the two of them. If she was playing a role, she was playing it extremely convincingly. Somehow, she had to catch her, if it was her. Finally, Lila shrugged and spoke.

"I got a note in my locker that told me to come here and I would see something funny. I'm ever so sure I normally don't follow random anonymous letters' instructions, but I asked Arnold what to do and he said that there was likely some kind of trick being played. Maybe by Fuzzy Slippers?" Lila's voice lilted a little with hesitation while she pronounced the name, and her volume dropped. Like she was loathe to say the name at all.

"But...you two can't be Fuzzy Slippers, right? That's not true...right? Arnold was wrong, please do tell me that he was mistaken."

Phoebe's jaw dropped. Gerald looked at her with shock. Lila thought _they_ were Fuzzy Slippers? What's this about a note?

"The note-" Phoebe began, her voice halting. "Do you have it?"

"Maybe, but tell me you two aren't Fuzzy Slippers first," Lila's voice wavered with suspicion.

"Are you crazy! Of course we're not Fuzzy Slippers! We've been spending the last four years trying to catch the motherfucker! That's why we're here, this was a set up! Whoever came to this spot was supposed to be Fuzzy Slippers!" Gerald exploded with frustration, telling far too much before Phoebe could stop him. "So right now we're looking for proof that _you_ ain't Fuzzy Slippers, Lila. So cough up the note."

Lila's face was blanched pale, eyes wide with shock at the accusation. "M-me? You think I could be...oh my dear, ooh goodness! What a nightmarish scenario, allow me to provide the note right away!" She whipped her bookbag around, fishing through it quickly and pulling out a small scrap of paper. Phoebe and Gerald recognized the stationary immediately.

"We've been played," Phoebe growled with frustration, storming over and snatching the note from her hands. It read precisely as Lila had said, in the clean script Phoebe instantly knew was Fuzzy Slipper's trademark.

"You gotta be kidding me? They knew it was a trap so they sent Sawyer?!" Gerald took the note from her, equally outraged. Lila stood, looking at the two of them with fear and interest.

"When did you get the note, Lila?" Phoebe felt her eyes hot with frustration.

"Around third block, is that significant?"

Phoebe and Gerald threw their hands up in the air and groaned at the same time.

"We didn't provide the clues to arrive here until fourth block. Fuzzy Slippers deciphered our ruse before we delivered the final clue and sent you here to throw us off, or mock us. Or both." Phoebe looked around with anger, simply devastated that their gambit had backfired. Was their adversary somewhere nearby, watching them? Ready to taunt them at their mistake?

"You mean we did all that work for nothing?" Gerald moaned, anger clear on his face. Lila seemed concerned and a little nervous.

"I'm afraid all we did was lose a potential tool, expose our own network of co-investigators, and ruin any chances we had at catching them once and for all," Phoebe slumped to her knees, bitter tears in her eyes. How had they tipped them off? Where was the mistake?

"H-hey, who's that…?" LIla's voice was small. Phoebe looked up, snapping her eyes onto the alleyway entrance. Lila was pointing at the shadow of a figure lingering at the end of the alley between the buildings, which stood frozen mid-stride.

"It's HIM!" Gerald roared, and broke off into the fastest sprint Phoebe had ever seen. Though she had no hope of catching up, Phoebe pushed herself into a run as well. To her surprise, Lila was right beside her, powerful legs trained by long hours in cross country pushing her in the space between Phoebe and Gerald, in hot pursuit of the distant figure that darted away instantly.

"Who-" Lila puffed between breaths, calling back to Phoebe, "Do you think it is?"

"It's a guy, whoever he is!" Gerald shouted, gaining ground quickly to the sprinting figure as they turned around the side of the gym. Phoebe prayed he would catch them, even as she felt her lungs burn from the sudden unprepared sprint.

"Catch him, Gerald!" Phoebe shrieked, her legs stumbling under her into a stuttering jog. She couldn't keep up with them. Her chest heaved, huge gasps sucking air in while she watched her two friends chasing down their quarry. Somehow, the impossible had happened, and the adversary that had remained one step ahead of them had made the mistake of showing up to see their victory first hand.

The figure - clad in a hoodie with the hood up, obscuring their face, Phoebe finally noticed - turned sharply around a building and disappeared from Phoebe's line of sight. Gerald and Lila were hot on their heels, turning out and disappearing as well. It was in their hands now. Somehow their gamble had paid off, though not in the way she intended.

She slowed and stopped, bending over to catch her breath.

_I need to get back into shape,_ she mused. Too many long nights studying this silly problem had taken away her spare time she usually spent going for walks or jogging. Now that they were catching their foe in person, this would all end. Provided, of course, Gerald and Lila actually caught them.

Minutes passed without their return, and Phoebe got a little worried. She decided it was best to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak, and make sense of the situation while the others chased their quarry. She trotted back to the alley between the gym and the generator building, mind a quickened blurring blank as she tried to think of the implications of catching their adversary once and for all.

Phoebe froze in her stride, catching sight of something she had _not_ seen beforehand.

A little black book.

A fluttering nervousness blossomed in her chest, and she felt light as the air she was sure she stopped breathing when her chest caught at sight of it. She practically fell over herself scrabbling to get it, clutching it to her chest protectively from an unseen Other that might snatch it away before she had a chance to open it.

Cracking the small black moleskine open, Phoebe cried out with triumph and joy quite unlike she had ever felt in her life. What does it mean to feel total victory over a challenge that previously you had felt so hopeless against? Phoebe was invincible then, her thousands of hours spent hard at work devising strategies to combat the rumormongering horror of Fuzzy Slippers all completely vindicated.

She stared down at the pages that had terrorized their friends so thoroughly, every page in that telltale neat script that she had come to associate with a force of such chaotic malignance that she had nightmares about reading words writ in this same handwriting. Of course, she couldn't read a single word, because to her lack of surprise the book was written in a cipher. The words on the page before her were almost totally gibberish, but it didn't matter. Without this book, Fuzzy Slippers might as well be neutered. If Gerald and Lila captured the escapee, they could force the code out of them. Phoebe squealed with joy a second time, falling onto her back with the book clutched to her chest tight.

The sounds of running footsteps, two pairs, filled the alley, and Phoebe heard Gerald and Lila panting for breath at the end of the small space. She looked over at them, both slick with sweat and faces flush from the effort, looking distraught and hopeless.

Gerald twisted his face incredulously at seeing Phoebe's perfect smile of pleasure. "W-what the hell? Pheebs, you lose your mind or something? We lost them."

"It doesn't matter, Gerald," Phoebe grinned, sitting up and holding the book up. "We got this."

Gerald's eyes flicked to the book, and he curled a lip in confusion. "So you got a book; we lost the piece of shit. He darted into the marching band's formation and got away under the bleachers while the drum major was jeering at us."

"Whoever it was, they surely have endurance," Lila added, her breathing slowing as she caught her air. "And oh so fast - you should consider everyone in an athletics club a potential suspect."

Phoebe shook her head, slapping the book again. "I will reiterate; it doesn't matter that you lost them. We won. We have their book. Look," she said, dramatically peeling it open with both hands, pages facing the two of them. Gerald and LIla pushed in close. Phoebe grinned, watching their faces. Gerald's eyes lit up with recognition, Lila's stayed passive but glanced at hers.

"This is Fuzzy Slipper's notebook of terrors. It's in code, but we can crack it. This has all their secrets, all their tactics, all their information and informants and WE got it!"

"Hot damn, baby!" Gerald grinned now, nodding with tentative excitement. "Did they drop it when they took off?"

"It seems so," Lila said, offering her hand to examine the book closer. Phoebe hesitated, something in her instincts telling her to not let Lila have the book. Lila's curious smile disarmed her, and she finally handed it over.

Lila poured over the pages, turning slowly while Gerald pumped his fists and hollered with victory. Phoebe took her glasses off, cleaning them with her pocketed cleaning cloth to get the sweat and fog off the lenses. In her blurry world without glasses, Lila looked like a reddish blob. She could have sworn she saw the blob scowl at her, but when she slipped the glasses back on, Lila was all curiosity, peering at the pages.

"I think this is a simple code meant to keep onlookers that happen to glance over the author's shoulder from seeing anything useful. It's jumbled, but not too poorly." She snapped the book shut, handing it back to Phoebe. "I do the daily jumble every morning, I would be ever so happy to help decipher it with you." Her smile was disarmingly sweet as always. Phoebe nodded, full of gratitude for the help.

Gerald grabbed them both in a sudden, unexpected hug. Phoebe's heart swelled for his jubilance. He lifted them both up in his strong grasp, twirling once before setting them down. Both girls squealed with surprise and delight as they were hoisted in this way, each landing gingerly on their feet with smiles.

"Congratulations, you two," Lila offered. "You're going to be heroes when everyone finds out you won."

Phoebe carefully put the book in her bag, intending to rush home right away and get started scanning the pages into her MacBook just in case the original was lost or stolen or destroyed somehow. She hoped Fuzzy Slippers didn't have any backups, but even if they did, with this book they would be able to out-maneuver their old foe with ease.

Somehow, they had won. It was as if some hidden angel had taken pity on their plight and reached down and gave them the exact weapon they needed. Phoebe went home that night so quickly she was sure her feet never touched the ground. She stayed up with Gerald all night discussing the book, figuring out the easier secrets and excitedly planning the announcement that they had won.

She was so excited at the seeming total victory that when she left the alley she never noticed Brian in a hoodie watching them from the other end of the alley, face flushed from an unexpected run, and slowly approach Lila when she and Gerald excitedly rushed away home.

She never saw Brainy expectantly ask to Lila, pulling from an inhaler deeply between each word, "Is it done?"

She never saw Lila smile a privately victorious smile, nod once for Brainy's benefit, and calmly answer, "For now."


	14. Chapter 14 - The World is Small

A/N: A new Hop Along album is out. Needless to say, my muse is returning. Maybe this means more regular updates? Stay tuned.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 14: The World is Small and Embarrassing

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

― Ernst F. Schumacher

* * *

Sid drummed his fingers on his energetically bouncing knee in the cab, irritation and agitation clear on his face and in the way he chewed his inner lower lip. It was a nasty habit he picked up with his uppers habit, and it left a sore, raw spot just in front of his left canine tooth that he worried and fussed with during times of stress. This was a time that pretty clearly qualified.

He lifted a tense fist to his mouth, watching the avenues of Hillwood pull themselves by the cab window with the tilted clarity the comedown his modest cocktail of casual drugs brought. He did not like how today was going.

A bubble of aggravation built and burst, coming out of his mouth with a growled, "Yo man can you put the lead out?!" The cabby uttered something, maybe apologetic, maybe rightfully calling Sid an asshole. Tension continued to boil just beneath the surface of Sid's nerves, and he was impatient to get back to his place. Notably without Rhonda.

This week had been full of interesting surprises, but none were as unexpected and as nasty of a surprise to Sid as Nadine knocking on their hotel room door and more or less forcing Sid out. Forced out of the room _he_ was paying for, no less.

Rhonda looked like she had seen a ghost, and rightfully so. Nadine hadn't shown as much as a fingernail in Hillwood since she tucked tail and ran out. Fuzzy Slippers had leaked her biggest secret, and the times were different then. People were different. Sid understood why she bailed, he's not sure he wouldn't have done the same damn thing given the circumstances. It ain't easy coming out lesbian in a town like Hillwood, not with the rat bastard Fuzzy Slippers about trying to make everyone's life miserable besides. He always thought leaking her secret was extremely uncool.

But it was kind of disappointing, frustrating, and scary for Sid that Rhonda so eagerly pushed him out the room with Nadine's sudden appearance at their door. She could have at least _raised a complaint._

"_Am I just her dealer or something?!_" Sid growled under his breath, vowing to start charging her regular price for anything she asked him. Maybe. If he could resist her. A disgusted portion of his conscience knew he wouldn't be able to resist her, and this was one of the reasons he was currently en route to his loft apartment to smoke a bowl and crash. He and Rhonda hadn't slept much in the previous night, in fact he'd been up for the better half of two days straight preparing for the party, actually going to the party, and then enjoying Rhonda's company in the aftermath. Truthfully, he was exhausted, and he had the wherewithal to acknowledge he wasn't the type of man who could function without some rest.

Sid's phone, the private one he didn't use for dealing, started to make a small fuss in his pocket. Automatically he had it out in front of his face, scanning the notification screen for whatever it was that called for his attention.

"Oh _shit_," he said suddenly, and loudly, startling the cab driver.

"Sorry, sir, did I miss the turn..?" He called back in a deep, brassy voice.

"Nah, dude, keep going, just-" Sid's mind reeled as he stared hard at the picture of Nadine and Rhonda mid embrace, faces nearly touching. "Just shut up okay?"

Another gruff sound from the front seat. Sid dropped the phone, both hands wiping his face and pulling at the skin in a primal need to loosen the tension in his face. He felt hot in his clothes, and the cab suddenly felt small.

_Rhonda's done with me,_ he despaired internally, the image of Nadine's face smiling and mouth opened _just so_ for an intimate kiss burned in his retinas. _Why do I give a shit?_ As he began to feel nauseated, hyper-aware of his skin, and his tongue seemed to grow in size and texture, cottony and fat in his throat, he realized he was having a minor stress-induced psychosomatic reaction to the designer cocktail of pleasure-inducing and energizing narcotics. _Shit, I cannot handle this right now,_ he mentally choked, and started to slap his palms against the window of the cab.

"Hey, dude! Hey pull over! Let me out! I gotta get out, let me out!" Sid's voice carried the frantic tone of someone without any idea what in the world they were supposed to be doing. The cabdriver obediently, almost too-quickly yanked the cab out of traffic, against the curb of the avenue.

Sid threw a handful of fifties at him from the backseat and stumbled out the cab, falling onto all fours on the sidewalk and dry heaving repeatedly. He knew he didn't have the contents required to actually vomit, having eaten little else in the last forty eight hours besides several vodka tonics and a designer cocktail of uppers.

Standing with a renewed vigor, and wiping his cheeks free of a fresh, slimy film of saliva, Sid spotted a bodega he was familiar with and hastily crossed the street to get inside. The cashier had seen him before plenty of times, and the regular pile of two Gatorade bottles and a small rattling bottle of extra strength Aspirin didn't even register to the seasoned owner. Sid was gulping down a mouthful of brown pills in between glugs of sickly sweet orange syrup water in no time. He was hunched on a bench beneath a small poplar tree along the street, wondering what the fuck had happened to Hillwood, and what the fuck everyone was going to do now that Fuzzy Slippers was back, and what he was going to do about Rhonda and Nadine.

When Sid didn't know the answers to questions, he went and asked someone that did.

A short walk through the downtown alleys took him to Stinky's place, a small house with an overgrown yard and huge garishly painted plaster sculptures that gave Sid the creeps. Stinky was what he heard someone call an "Underground Artist," which basically translated to Sid as roughly "rich folks will buy Stinky's weird garbage." He passed a huge bulging brown teddy bear head with working floodlights for eyes grinning with childish innocence from the overgrown grasses of the yard, hating every inch of the walk up to the porch which was festooned with ashtrays. Each was a massive monument to Stinky's habit, a huge pale pile of ashed and stubbed butts full to spilling.

Sid pounded a skinny fist against the paint-peeled wooden screen door, which was hanging slightly ajar and rattled fiercely when he hit it with impatience.

"Just a darned fucking second," he heard Stinky curse from inside. He also heard something else, something mechanical, sputtering inside. The heavier full wooden door swung open suddenly, and the smell of motor oil and dirty steel hit Sid like a slap to the head.

"Oh shit, Sid. What's brought you to my humble abode my minute Machiavellian friend?"

Stinky had scored ridiculously well on the English portion of his high school exit exams. When it came to vocabulary, Stinky punched well above his weight, and was awful proud of it too. It drove Sid nuts.

"Yeah, shut up you lazy hippy. Where's my money?"

"Well gosh, Sid, I didn't think I owed you any monetary compensation on account of I have been clean for about three months, I reckon."

"Oh yeah. Sorry, force of habit I guess." Sid had tried to forget that Stinky had hit rock bottom not so long ago. He stayed away from his close friend unless he had business to attend to. The sober people in his life had a way of making him feel an unidentified uneasiness with himself. That empty yawning sensation settled on him again. "Ya gonna invite me in?"

Stinky moved out of the way, long tall frame stalking back to the machine in the center of his cluttered living room. Crap was everywhere. Sid could barely identify most of it. The walls were wood panel, aging the house as a relic of the 60's, and every available surface of wall hung a grotesque painting of every sort Sid could imagine. Stinky painted nudes. A lot of them. Most of them his own.

In the center of the room, however, an old, nearly rusted out lawn mower motor ran and sputtered next to a large blank canvas which was carelessly decorated with paint. Instead of the expected blades on the bottom of the motor, Stinky had fashioned what looked like a bristling array of differently sized paintbrushes, each dipped in bold and bright paints. It looked like an awfully complex way to make a mess..

"What the fuck is this thing, you building a car?" Sid stepped over a pile of empty tin cans that were filled with dirty paint brushes, and stood next to a huge wooden Indian Chief carved statue, bold red mahogany and looking serious as hell. That thing gave Sid the creeps. It had to be bad luck.

"I'm figurin' out myself a new way to paint. I figure if one of my hands gets the brush movin' pretty good, well a few horsepower will get the job done right quick."

"You gonna sell these, uh, paintings at your next show or something?"

"Sure as sloths shit themselves," Stinky grinned down at his machine, and kicked it off with a nudge from his boot. The room was suddenly so quiet Sid could hear the symphony of wind chimes that carpeted the back porch of the little two bedroom house. It sounded deceptively peaceful.

"Fuzzy Slippers is back, Stink." Sid stood with his hands in his pockets, knowing he looked furious.

"Yeah I reckon I got that text along with all of dang near half of Hillwood. I had no Earthly idea Rhonda was a dyke, though it makes sense if you stop and give it a good ponderin'."

Sid felt his hands tighten in their pockets.

"Rhonda ain't gay, she's bisexual. NADINE's gay."

"Well we all knew that on account of that bastard Fuzzy Slippers telling everyone in high school."

"That ain't the real reason I'm here, Stink."

"Yeah I figured you would have something to worry about with this new mysterious development."

"Fuzzy Slippers has my rap sheet, man. Yours, too, don't forget."

Stinky rubbed his cleanly shaved chin thoughtfully. "I reckon most of Hillwood knows you are up to the drugs business anyway."

"Yeah the half I want to know. And we both know that's not the worst FS has on you and me."

Stinky peered at his friend from over his prominent nose and the ridiculous curl of his mustache. Sid thought it made him look like a porn star.

"Well what is there to be done about it? Pretty much nobody could figure out who it was last time, not even Phoebe and Gerald."

Sid pushed some pizza boxes off a coffee table to make room for his boots when he reclined to sit at a couch opposite. Stinky made a token effort to remove them from the carpet, stacking them on a record player that looked so dusty it probably hadn't been used in years. Sid wasn't sure if Stinky was a hoarder or if he just was a terribly messy person. Once comfortable on the tacky yellow orange corduroy couch, he decided to level with his old friend.

"Rhonda was the one that sent out that candid pic of Helga mid tantrum."

No reply from the tall hipster artist. Just a look of mild surprise.

"And I guess her posing as Fuzzy Slippers on Lila's behalf must have pissed off the REAL fuzzy slippers something awful," Sid sighed, leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling fan limned with dust bunnies. "So whoever the real FS is back to old tricks. Probably didn't take too kindly to being imitated by someone they knew."

"Gosh, you think it was Helga?" Stinky innocently asked.

Sid lifted his head in surprise, hearing himself intake a little gasp of surprise. "Helga! Hey wait, why not? Rhonda embarrassed her pretty bad - and it's just the kind of thing Pataki would do!"

It made a lot of sense to Sid. He knew it wasn't Lila - why would Lila retaliate for Rhonda doing what she asked? Sid knew Rhonda's entire plan in that little blunder, he was there when she cooked it up.

"I don't think I can recall even a single time Helga Pataki got the business from that terrible Fuzzy Slippers," Stinky said slowly and carefully. "And she did hate Lila and Rhonda something fierce. She even stole homecoming queen from Rhonda on account of her bitter jealousies."

Sid nodded, remembering the fiasco well. Rhonda played it off, told everyone she knew that she set up Helga to win herself. Sid knew the awful truth. Helga was pretty vocal about how she took it from Rhonda, and always had been. Now, Sid suspected that it was Fuzzy Slippers, aka Helga Pataki, all along.

The ghostly memory of Rhonda's gross sobbing on the other end of a telephone, miles from where he could help her, fueled a fury in Sid he was unfamiliar with.

"So let's go get her!" Sid barked, sitting up.

Stinky blinked at him slowly, and rubbed his unkempt, stubbled chin with a grease-smeared hand.

"Well let's not be too hasty here, Sid. We don't have any proof at all that Helga is the one what cooked up all that trouble and mess in High School. It could be anyone."

"Anyone except the people we know it ain't, like Rhonda, or Lila."

"Or Gerald or Phoebe."

"Right. And I hate to say it, Stink, but who else we know that's smart enough to pull off that kind of villainy? The list is short. And Helga never got one bad turn, not one!"

Stinky rubbed his chin again, looking distressed but convinced. Sid felt like it was an unattractive look for his friend.

"Gosh, when you think about it, the evidence does seem to incriminate our fiery friend Helga, don't it? And we just went to all that trouble on her account last night. I played my steel drum and everything."

"Right! So I say we round up a few of the old gang and see what they think, and then we go GET her."

Sid watched the idea blunder it's way across Stinky's features while he decided. You could trace the internal disagreement leaving his cheeks and dropping off his fuzzy chin in slow motion. When he finally replied, merely moments later, he had the iron conviction of someone absolutely unsure of themselves but too anxious to make a decision.

"Well I reckon we can at least get a few folks together and see if she can answer some questions in a reasonable and forthright manner."

Sid and Stinky went through their extensive lists of contacts and did what the two of them did very very well; stir trouble. Before the hour passed they had a few old friends ready to join them in a direct confrontation with Helga. Sid was unsurprised that many others had come to a similar conclusion that they all had - Helga was probably Fuzzy Slippers and the hated enemy they'd all known to be synonymous with treachery and deceit.

The two of them headed out to Gerald Field to meet with the rest, Stinky glad to see his friend more and talkative as usual, and Sid pensive and quiet enough to keep his thoughts to himself.

Sid was sure that whatever happened there would be a serious reckoning in Hillwood tonight.

* * *

"Give it up, Pataki, there's too many of us!"

Helga turned on her heel, exhausted thigh muscles screaming for oxygen and rest while she executed a sharp turn down a sidewalk path, sprinting with every ounce of strength she had. Behind her, about a dozen old faces she never thought would be turned in anger towards her, murder in their eyes.

She held her breath and darted suddenly into traffic, sliding over the hood of a car that nearly hit her and dashing across the street when her sneakers hit pavement. She thanked her years of gym conditioning and athleticism with every breath she sucked in, kick-jumping off an open dumpster to grab an errantly hanging fire escape ladder and ascended as fast she could.

As she looked down the metal lattice she scaled with tired limbs and raw palms, she only saw stranger's expressions on the crowd that was beginning to try to follow her up. Helga was honestly surprised, really shocked beyond what she could process. It was really happening.

She was running for her life.

* * *

"I can't _believe_ this," Rhonda blurted out, guts feeling empty and full of wind all at once. She scrolled through the text thread that Fuzzy Slippers had started with damn near her entire contacts list, furor and tumult coming from the text crowd while F.S. fueled their building rage with more and more pictures.

Apparently, Rhonda's old nemesis had been busy collecting ammunition in their long departure.

"I-It's really not that bad," Nadine nervously ventured, placing a hand on Rhonda's shoulder. There was tenderness, concern, in the feather gentle weight of that palm. Rhonda felt like there was half a decade of forgiveness in that touch.

It just made her more sick.

"No, Nadine, this is _bad_. This is_ very _bad."

"Why? So some sneak got a candid photo of us kissing. I was outed in high school, unless you forgot." There was that acid bitterness Rhonda remembered.

"No, who cares about that? What's the _real_ problem is everything else that's being sent."

"I mean, everybody's grown up now, all that kiddy high school shit doesn't matter," Nadine tried to reason.

Rhonda shook her head, her dark bob bouncing slightly. "People grew up, and their problems grew up with them. Affairs, disastrous rendezvous, illegal shit; Nadine, Hillwood hasn't changed since you left. If anything, it's cascaded into a beautiful crescendo of _horrible._"

Nadine stuffed her hands into the pockets of her short jacket at waist-height, pacing the large hotel room back and forth. Rhonda was too worried to even take the time to admire the taut, lithe sculpt of Nadine's legs in her grey jeans. The color contrast did wonders against Nadine's dark skin, a gift from her mixed heritage, but the aesthetic appreciation was lost on her.

"For example," Rhonda began, scrolling the lengthy mass text thread towards an particular photo. It was dark, but the contrast of an amber streetlight illuminated the unmistakably round forms of Harold and Patty, conspicuously dumping something with shoes that was rolled up in a sleeping back into a dumpster. The shot was taken from across the street, and zoomed in to such a degree that the fidelity was totally lost, but all it really had to to was _hint._ Cast suspicion.

She slid up next to Nadine, her arm snaking around her waist, and brought the phone's screen up to her face for a closer inspection. Nadine narrowed her eyes, and Rhonda watched the almond slivers of doe-brown scan the image, and then at once recognize the implication it offered.

"Holy _shit_, did Harold and Patty _off_ someone?" Nadine's voice trembled with a hushed note of strain.

"Probably not," Rhonda said, returning her phone to it's place in her purse quickly. She had taken care to scroll right past all the pictures that had been taken of _her._ No need for Nadine to see them right now. "There's almost certainly a logical explanation for that picture, as I'm sure there's logical explanations for everything that's sent by Fuzzy Slippers. The truth is boring. But Hillwood doesn't care. All they have to do is _hint_ and the barnyard beasts get to braying."

A hot breeze from the open balcony door stirred the long, heavy-draped curtains into waving the midday shadows about the teal-green carpet playfully. Nadine moved to stand in the sunlight, and the late summer sun set her beautiful hair aglow, like spun gold interwoven through clean hay. Rhonda couldn't help but notice her natural beauty this time. It softened her worries, smoothed the dangerous edge in her nerves for just a moment. She was thankful she had someone as earthly and human as Nadine as a friend again. Maybe more?_ If those kisses meant anything, definitely more, _Rhonda mused.

"I still can't believe Sid's face when he saw me in that doorway," Nadine said, laughter in her throat. "I don't think I'll ever forget it."

"Well, poor simple silly Sid. I'm sure he was _stupefied_. Not that it's particularly difficult to produce stupefaction in Sid. But a radiantly aglow Nadine was the _last_ person he or I expected to see at our hotel room door. You can't really blame him."

"He sure got mad." Nadine was all grins again, a cocky cant to her chin. It was a flirtatious look. An _alive_ spark to her eyes promised Rhonda something that thrilled her inwardly.

"Well, when the former best friend of his current FWB arrives and asks to be alone with said paramour, it sets the imagination spinning, don't you think?" Rhonda's tone returned to that coy, playful bounce she used when she intended to capture prey.

Nadine, however, was a lioness. Though she wasn't a very physically imposing person, for some reason when she stood unmoved in that sunlight, hands in her pockets and a troublesome grin on her golden features, Rhonda felt legitimately small and intimidated. Another thrill she wasn't expecting.

"I'm sure if he knew that moments after he left I'd have my tongue in your mouth, he'd be fit to be tied."

"_Nadine!_" Rhonda feigned shock and outrage, unable to help herself. She'd had oh so few chances to play the game with a worthy opponent - that is, someone female - and every chance had been twenty times more rewarding than with even the most savvy man. Part of her wondered if she'd ever have need for a man again, if it felt this good to flirt with girls.

"Oh shut up, you love it. And what's the deal with this _former best friend_ crap? How's about _current best friend._"

"We have yet to reconcile, despite your amorous advances." Rhonda receded, coquettishly twisting her hips in a retreat to the bathroom opposite the open balcony door. In truth, it was a real retreat; she needed to get her hammering heart under control. She was still riding the variety of drugs she and Sid had decided to spend their evening with together, and the adrenaline excitement from this very unexpected, and very physically confrontational reconciliation messed with her guts. She turned the water on to wash her face, splashing cold water delicately over the areas that could be washed - not all her makeup was waterproof today.

Nadine's hand daringly slid around onto her slender tummy, pressing intimately onto it when Ronda's eyes were pressed into the hotel room towel. She dropped it like a hot iron and spun, face to face with Nadine again.

How delicate Rhonda felt, pressed against the bathroom counter by the soft strength of Nadine. She imagined herself no more heavy than spun sugar. Her feet barely touched the ground, kissing it with the balls of her designer shoes. Her hands rest against the mountain presence of her old friend, finding her shoulders as sturdy as they looked.

The interlude was put to a short end when things began to become too intense for Rhonda again. She had stopped Nadine from kissing her three times now; a desperate need for an explanation busied itself within her mind.

"Is this too much?" Nadine blessedly offered Rhonda an escape path. "I don't want to push you to do anything-"

"No, darling, Nadine, this is okay," Rhonda slipped from the bathroom, explaining. "It's just such a shock to see you, and after so many years, and after such a parting, I am having a bit of trouble processing all this...kissing."

A lesser woman would have been deflated by the admission, but Nadine pressed her hand to Rhonda's, and backed away.

"When I confessed what was really going on with me, with us, I never expected it to be told to the school."

"I didn't say a word, I swear." Rhonda meant it.

"I left town to protect you," Nadine started, shrugging her shoulders at the memory. "Did I even need to bother?"

What was clearly a double edged accusation stung Rhonda more than she expected; outrage she was surprised to feel began to surface in her expressions and words.

"I had _nothing _to do with that information getting out, and you left despite my most _earnest _pleas. I can't believe you would insinuate that our parting was anything less than agonizing. I surely had my share of the blame for everything that happened, but I was torn apart when you were forced to leave. I didn't _just _lose my best friend."

Nadine wanted to be mad, Rhonda could see it on her face. But the last tidbit pulled a curl of a smile on her face, and the tension was dispelled.

"Well, I made my apologies, and I know enough about Rhonda Wellington Lloyd to count that as yours, so are we square?"

Rhonda squeezed the fingers held her in hand. "Square. But you are being far too blazé about this Fuzzy Slippers re-emergence problem."

"You could just leave Hillwood."

The suggestion was moot, however Rhonda nodded by moving her chin very slightly. "Mm, yes, and don't fret, I _shall_ leave Hillwood, once I'm done here. There's _salons_ in Paris and New York that have not yet been graced by my radiance, and we can't have that." Rhonda playfully touched Nadine's nose for emphasis, stepping away to get back to her phone. Being even a few moments of flirtatious conversation away from regular updates on the mass text fracas set her nerves alight.

Of course, updates did not disappoint.

"Nadine, we have to leave this hotel room right now."

"Sure, babe, but, are we...a thing...now?"

"You can say girlfriends, I am comfortable with it. And I don't know. Maybe? Maybe not! There's a lot of mess to sort out first. I'd like to start with being friends again before we start doing the bravery thing and announcing our truest love to the world and my parents."

"Don't blame me if I can't help but try to kiss you from time to time, when you're looking especially cute and interesting."

"Like one of your bugs?" Rhonda teased.

"Just like them! In fact you remind me of this particularly interesting genus of bombardier beetle," Nadine began to animatedly dive into one of her old-school insect geek outs, and while Rhonda found it adorably nostalgic, she really _did_ have more important things to do. She shut Nadine up with a gently lifted hand.

"Shh, Nadine, _darling_, you can compare me to something that sounds positively insultingly gross during the pillow talk. I'm not kidding; we have to _go._"

A laugh like the sun bounced Nadine's hair and shoulders. "Sure, where to?"

"We need to get Eugene, and then we need to stop Sid."

Nadine was grabbing her things while she nodded along, shouldering her very chic designer bag while Rhonda threw together the remnants of her outfit the night before and stuffing them with uncharacteristic haste into her own very chic designer bag. A small thought of _We are indeed compatible_ touched her surface thoughts for an instant.

When Rhonda's miscellaneous accoutrements were gathered, Nadine held the hotel door open for her and they walked quickly towards the elevator.

"So why are we off to go get Eugene?" Nadine ventured. Nadine had left before the major Eugene fallout, but Rhonda was sure she had probably heard the gorey details anyway. At least the hesitance in her voice seemed to betray so.

"He's one of those impossibly positive voices of reason that we'll need to quell the angry mob Sid is in the midst of stoking." As if in response, her phone angrily chirped with the notification of yet more texts in the massive chain. Rhonda's initial count was at least sixty people responding actively to the pictures that were coming from UNKNOWN01, which was obviously Fuzzy Slippers. Some people had made futile attempts to "hack" the number of the sender, but, it turns out it's just not that easy. Nobody seemed to have the necessary technological skill to crack the anonymous number.

Not that it would have made any difference. They'd picked their target.

"Helga is in very real danger," Rhonda sighed once they were within the privacy of closed elevator doors. "Sid's got most of these mooks on his contacts list and deals to the rest. He's got real clout. And he and Stinky seem to have been convinced that Helga is F.S."

Nadine shrugged her shoulders. "Is she?"

Rhonda paused, given the sudden reason to be unsure. She had to admit, the circumstantial evidence pointed solidly at Pataki. And the tone Fuzzy Slippers took when they chose to respond to the texts directly definitely took on the familiar imperious arrogance that the bombastic blonde had always wielded like a blunt instrument. But something just nagged at Rhonda, it didn't fit quite right.

For one thing, _nobody_ could claim that Eugene hadn't been defended with damn near violent vociferousness by Helga when his dark secret was unfortunately leaked. Rhonda did not like revisiting that memory.

"I don't think she is," Rhonda finally responded. "But regardless of her guilt, Sid has to be stopped."

* * *

Helga yelped and held the fresh wound on her calf in reflex, nearly stumbling while she ran. The rock that had been thrown clattered away off the resonant exterior of a dumpster, to settle innocently among the rest of the urban detritus as if it had not just been thrown in hatred by a former friend.

She picked up her pace automatically, the clamor of pursuant footsteps a constant motivator for her tired legs and her burning lungs.

The chase had started moments ago, ignited by an angry spark and false accusations.

Helga had been on cloud fucking _nine_, mid-monologue.

"He cares for me! He cares for me! Arnold Shortman, object of youthful obsession and target of my matured desire, actually really literally LIKES me, for real! It's not some stupid fantasy anymore," she paused, clapping her hands together and squeezing them breathlessly to her chest. The terrible fluttering in her rib cage threatened to strike her suddenly dead, and she squealed loudly while she gleefully silenced it. "And we have a _date!_ An honest to god, actual fucking date! The man's gonna get dressed _up_ for me! Me! Helga Geraldine Pataki, nobody's anything, is gonna be opposite Arnold Shortman dressed to the nines and the focus of his attention! I'll get to watch him talk in private without distraction! Oh my god, I'll get to see him drink _water_ from a _glass_-" the mundane idea somehow set her mind spinning "-if he excuses himself to use the bathroom I'm gonna take a _SHIT_ with excitement, I swear to God! Oh God, I have to hurry! I have to get back! Shower! Makeup! Clothes! I have to tell Phoebe, I have to tell-" Helga stopped suddenly, her mouth snapping shut and her instincts firing off.

About a dozen or so people she recognized, lead by that shitheel greaseball Sid and his womanizing shadow Stinky, milled aggressively down the block, watching them. They looked pretty fucking mad. Something screamed at Helga that this wasn't right, and she needed to _go._

"Pataki!" Sid suddenly barked out. People walking the sidewalk between her and the mob - Helga was pretty sure this was a mob - turned and looked at Sid curiously. Some people got the picture and hustled out of the way of the tall blonde that was clearly squared off with the aggressive-looking gang.

"Yeah, in the flesh." She surprised herself by how cool and calm her response came. What was going on? This wasn't right. She felt extremely unsafe.

"What have you got to say about all this?!" Sid held up his cellphone and pointed at it dramatically, as if that was something that meant anything at all, and was a usual thing to do in any way.

"Nice...phone?" Helga tried to guess, hunching her shoulders and lifting her hands in confusion.

She saw Stinky look nervously at Sid, put his hand on his shoulder. "Sid, I'm not sure it's Helga, on account she seems to have no Earthly idea what the heck you're talking about."

"Yeah, listen to the hipster with the mustache. I've got no idea what this shit is about, but it's isn't funny." Helga balled her fists, shifting her weight to the balls of her feet slightly. She was ready to bolt. A shitty feeling in her guts told her this was about to get intense. Schoolyard instincts sharpened with self defense classes and a lot of full contact sports gifted Helga with a natural instinct about when her ass was at immediate risk. This was one of those times.

"Yeah? How come it's all happening right now? Huh? Can you answer that, Helga? You never got hit by Fuzzy Slippers _once_ and then Lila comes back in town _engaged to Arnold_ and then all this shit starts happening?! You honestly expect us to believe you got _nothing_ to do with it?!"

Helga furrowed her brow, shaking her head once. "Fuzzy Slippers? Wait, Lila's in town? What's this about-"

"Shut UP! I'm sick of all this cat and mouse bullshit! First you get us all to dance to your tune to fuck up Arnold and Lila's engagement, and _now_ you're out to ruin everyone else's lives, too!" Sid's voice was raising in volume with every false accusation. Helga's skin pricked up, tiny hairs standing on end.

She bolted.

"Get her!" someone yelled, and then the chase began.

And now she was running like mad, trying to scale a fence as fast as she could. Four blocks of chasing had felt like an eternity. She'd caught a thrown rock on her left calf, and the spot on her leg throbbed with fury when she put any pressure on the leg, but she wouldn't stop running for anything.

She was charging through a crowd of people down a busy sidewalk, pushing through with sheer force of inertia, hoping and praying someone would get a clue and call the cops. All she got were angry shouts of surprise and dismay while she bulled through, but the general disordered chaos she left in her wake served to slow down the pursuing gang.

_I am not supposed to be running for my life_, she angrily thought. _I am supposed to be pampering my skin with lava soap and expensive French moisturizing creams and getting ready to see Arnold._ The hateful scenario propelled her faster. She was about to turn a corner and head through another group of people when three arms shot out of an open storefront and yanked her bodily inside.

The shock of the sudden change of momentum sent her barreling ass over teakettle into the small, dark room, and her still elevated sense of survival had her on her feet and ready to fight instantly.

"Helga!" she heard a small, familiar voice squawk, and her raised fists hesitated.

Eugene was on the ground in front of her and groaned "I'm okay," with Rhonda's ass directly in front of his face and her legs thrown up awkwardly in the air. Layered on top of her, a tall, dark skinned blonde in a fashionable outfit that looked vaguely like Nadine groaned. "I should have got that accidental death and dismemberment life insurance," she moaned, and Helga had no idea what was going on for the second time that day.

Thinking quickly, she threw herself against the door to slam it shut, and sank to the ground beneath the window. The tumult of her pursuing crowd passed the door soon after. Helga waited until the shouting and sound of footsteps died off before she turned back to look at the trio, now helping Eugene stand and dusting each other off.

"What the _fuck_ is going on?!" Helga demanded in a harsh whisper.

"You were being chased so we pulled you in here to lose them." Eugene offered, moving over to help Helga up. She started to stand, but her legs wobbled and refused immediately. Eugene sank to sit next to her instead.

"Where is this," she looked around, chest finally calming so she could catch her breath.

"This is the magic shop. They'll probably come back to check here, so you should catch your breath and double back." Eugene produced a bottle of water, which Helga tore open voraciously, still struggling to comprehend why this felt like a fucking action movie all of a sudden. Wasn't this a romance?

"Sid got some people together to form a lynch mob," Rhonda explained, looking down at Helga. "They're after Fuzzy Slippers. And I guess he and his posse decided that means you, Helga."

Helga didn't reply, far too busy gulping down the bottle of water with voracious need.

"So does it mean you, Helga?" Rhonda asked, her tone lifted with suspicion.

The water bottle lowered slowly, and Helga's glare was revealed, two blue eyes clearly staring Rhonda down with outrage.

Finding strength in her legs again, she stood slowly while she pushed the bottle into Eugene's hands. "You saying it does mean me, Lloyd?" She was tired, but she was absolutely sure she could kick Rhonda's ass right this instant, even with the tall leggy blonde that looked like Nadine looking pretty protective of her.

"Just answer the question, Helga," the Nadine-stranger urged.

"Okay, are you Nadine? This is fucking obnoxious," Helga growled.

"Yeah. Long time no see. You look like hell. Now answer the question."

"No. No it most certainly fucking does not mean me. I am _not_ Fuzzy Slippers. What the _fuck,_ Rhonda."

Rhonda, perhaps feeling brave with Nadine standing next to her, shot back, "There's a lot of people that are pretty convinced it's you, and even I have to admit the evidence is hard to ignore. If I wasn't fairly certain that you don't have the level of actual malice and nastiness in you to do it, I'd swear it was you. You're certainly manipulative enough. Smart enough. Jealous enough, too."

Helga took a step forward, and Nadine tensed. "_Jealous_! Jealous of what exactly?"

Eugene put a hand on Helga's arm, and he spoke up. "Listen, Helga, I know it's not you. I've been telling Rhonda all about how you helped me. Even the stuff she didn't know. The things I made you promise not to tell anyone."

Helga loosened up, still on edge but not as dangerously so. "So that's what that was? That's why I got rocks thrown at me and threats to throw me off a bridge?"

"I'm afraid so. They're all convinced it's you. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust you, Pataki. It _could_ be you. I'm just not sure that you're not being set up."

"That is most certainly what is happening." Helga held her head with a hand, suddenly very sick to her stomach again. "I can't believe this fucking week, man. First Arnold and the party and the hospital, now this."

"Hospital?" Eugene started to ask, but he got interrupted by Rhonda.

"Helga, you have to get out of here. Maybe out of Hillwood, at least until this blows over."

"Wrong again, Lloyd. I've got a date with Football Head in less than half an hour, and it's not one of those rain-check possible dates. I'm going to be there, looking amazing. Which means I have to get home, showered, ready, and dressed all in about three minutes."

Rhonda shook her head in disbelief. "Absolutely not! That's simply not happening! Did you forget that they threw _rocks _at you? You can't just go nibble hors d'oeuvres with Arnold and pretend this didn't happen!"

Eugene tugged at her tshirt. "Helga, please listen to her. Rhonda came to me first to get my help. She knew I wouldn't believe Sid and that we could help you. You're extremely lucky you ran by here. You have to get out of town safely, right now."

Helga was surprised to find herself crying. Already hot cheeks suddenly stung with lines of hot tears that dragged across salty red skin in immediate volume. Shaking, she steadied herself on a plastic skeleton display, leaning against a bony shoulder while the deluge hit her. It wasn't fair. She'd finally settled the bad blood between her and Arnold and had a real chance at reconciliation. A decade of build up was about to be concluded. Closure. Finality. She'd finally know one way or the other if Arnold _loved_ her, and it was being taken away from her. She let herself cry for minutes, uncaring that made her seem weak in front of Rhonda. What use did she have for strength when all her efforts were being invalidated? Somewhere deep inside the despair, outrage was building itself a volcanic pressure.

"Helga," Rhonda began carefully, almost sounding sincerely concerned. "If we work together we can probably root out the real Fuzzy Slippers, but it's going to take time. Maybe weeks, or months. I might be able to calm Sid and his goons down later, but that accusation...it's pretty ironclad. If we're going to nail this bastard, it's going to take work. Hard work. I'll help you as long as I'm convinced you're not the culprit."

Listening with silence, Helga's emotions boiled in a maddening mixture of rage, sadness, and envy. It was never easy for her, not like other girls. Not like Rhonda, or Lila.

_Lila._

"Hold the fuck up-" Helga suddenly stammered. "It's Lila." She spoke with absolute certainty. She knew it was her. She had no evidence whatsoever, but she just _knew_.

"What? Helga, don't be ridiculous-"

"It's not ridiculous. In fact," she suddenly began seeing the clues that had always been before her, and the epiphany set her voice to animation. "it's always been her! Except when we were little kids, like, really little, it's always been Lila!"

"It can't be Lila, though, she was very viciously mocked many times. Only you were never attacked," Eugene reminded patiently.

"No, listen, it's her. I know it's her. I can't prove it yet, but, get me in a room with her and I can make her confess." Helga stood straight, suddenly awash with the iron of her conviction.

"I don't think so, Helga, I'm not going to get tricked into taking you to her so you can settle an old score in the guise of finding Fuzzy Slippers." Rhonda crossed her arms over her chest defiantly.

"I don't need you to lead me to anything, Rhonda. I know where she is. She's with my sister and my mother. It's where I would go if I wanted to send me a message."

The three others in the room stared at Helga, uncomprehending about what message could possibly be sent.

"What message?" Rhonda finally asked.

"_Come and get me._" Helga grinned.

* * *

Gerald ran out of his frat house and jumped into the open van door where his girlfriend and Brainy were waiting. The van was moving before Gerald finished closing the large sliding side door and buckled in.

"Alright, let's go do this!" he growled. This Fuzzy Slippers shit had him on edge. He _hated_ this shit. He knew it was going to get bad this time around, but not _this_ bad.

"Gerald, we have to find Helga and Arnold before the others do," Phoebe turned in the passenger seat to face him, looking tired and stressed.

"Yeah, no shit. Brainy, you know where to go?"

Brian nodded, turning through a red light without stopping. The van's tires squealed in protest at the maneuver that was far beyond their usual performance specifications.

"We're headed towards Eugene's magic shop. Rhonda texted me that they have Helga there. No sightings of Arnold yet, but we're using Stoop Kid to keep an eye on the boarding house."

"Fucking perfect," Gerald growled again. "This escalated way too damn quickly. It's shameful. I thought all us PS118 kids were a lot tighter than this."

Phoebe frowned, turning back to face the road. "Yes, I find it disappointing as well. I never imagined things could become so positively _Antebellumesque_. Any victory we are able to achieve over Fuzzy Slippers will be purely phyrric at this point."

"Babe, I love you, but cool it with the academia. I am having enough damn trouble putting all of this together as it is."

"Oh, sorry," Phoebe replied with tired irritation. "I'll dumb it down for you both." Gerald let her rudeness pass-they were all on edge, and someone besides tall, quiet, and ugly had to keep the peace.

"Just run through it with me one more time," Gerald said.

"Right, well," Phoebe began, and suddenly pointed out the next turn. "Left here, Brian. Anyway, as far as I can piece together, sometime last night Lila called Rhonda and told her of her engagement to Arnold. This upset Rhonda so she had someone - my suspicion is Sid or one of his goons - follow Helga and Arnold and snap that unfortunate picture of her during her meltdown. Rhonda's idea was to _copy_ Fuzzy Slippers, but the attempt seems to have angered the _real_ Fuzzy Slippers. And it is our misfortune that our mystery figure has been gathering _substantial_ ammunition to use against Hillwood in their hiatus. We were wrong to think we'd won against them, Gerald. They _let_ us think we won."

Gerald remembered the day they'd finished things with Fuzzy Slippers. Chasing the guy with Lila. Losing them, but finding the book, which was just as good as catching them. The attacks ended shortly after. He'd thought they'd won.

Finding out they'd just been played again really pissed Gerald off.

"I can't believe we got played like puppets, man," Gerald shook his head. "We bought it totally."

"Ah," Brian suddenly started to talk, and Gerald and Phoebe both started as if they'd forgotten he was in the van, driving it. He just had that way of silently blending in that made it easy to forget he was pretty much always around, watching and listening.

Gerald and Phoebe both seemed to think of the same thing simultaneously.

"Brian, are you Fuzzy Slippers?" Phoebe asked directly, and Brian stopped hard at a red light. They all fell forward and then back into their seats from the immediate stop. Brian looked at Phoebe slowly, then at Gerald. Gerald watched him closely, feeling like he was ready to beat some ass.

"Uh, no," he started. "But I was at first."

"You wanna explain that, my man?" Gerald tried not to sound as threatening as he felt.

"I uh," he started the van moving again, flicking his eyes to the rear view mirror to catch Gerald's angry look. "back when we were kids. Like second grade or third."

"You?" Phoebe simply asked.

"Uh, yes."

"But not anymore."

"No."

"Bullshit," Gerald growled a third time.

"I quit. Someone else started doing mean things and using my codename. So I quit. Didn't like it."

Phoebe turned in her seat. "Gerald, I have no idea if we should believe him or not, but I _did_ hypothesize that there were _two_ iterations of Fuzzy Slippers. I abandoned the theory once all the attacks stopped when we found that book, reasoning that the attacks could only stop if there was only one, as we only had one source of the rumors. What do you think?"

Gerald scoffed. "I think Brian's been fooling everybody, going after everyone but the girl he's in love with 'cause he's too scared to be our friend. I think this fool's just confessed, and we oughta throw him to the wolves."

Brian nervously looked at Gerald in the mirror again.

"No, it's not me. I wouldn't." He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "You are my friends."

Phoebe shook her head. "I'm afraid you'll have to prove it to us. Helga was never attacked. I at first suspected Helga for that, but knew that she wasn't capable of the kind of viciousness towards me and you and Arnold that Fuzzy Slippers displayed. However that detail would make perfect sense if it was you, simply unable to attack the woman you've been in love with since childhood. If it's not Helga, it has to be you."

Brian gulped visibly, his adam's apple moving slowly. Gerald was ready to strike.

"It's not me." He insisted.

"Then who?" Gerald demanded, putting a hand on Brainy's shoulder and squeezing.

Brian hesitated, visibly nervous to respond.

"Who is it, Brian?" Phoebe reiterated. Brian's shoulder slumped, and a great tension seemed to escape him suddenly. His body language changed. He sighed, his hands loosening their grip on the steering wheel. He gave up.

"Lila."


	15. Chapter 15 - I Call You Enemy

A/N: We are rapidly approaching the end now. I expect to write three (maybe four) more chapters and then an epilogue. I have no idea what the final word count will be, but it's been quite a doozy so far.

I haven't said it much yet, but thank you so much for your extremely kind words. In truth, this is the first fanfic I've ever written, but it's also the longest story I've ever written by about one hundred and twenty thousand words. So believe it or not, I have no idea what I'm doing, and kind of just making up this writing process as I go.

I will be forever thankful that I decided to go for it and write this thing, and that I've had such a rewardingly vocal audience. Thank you! This chapter's for you, my readers.

For you, I have this little tidbit. I have the ending almost written, and it is going to KICK your asses. :)

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 15: I Call You Enemy Cause I'm Afraid of What You Could Call Me

"The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling." - Lucretius

* * *

With steps as light as the sunlight on blades of grass, Arnold Shortman hurried himself to the boarding house in pursuit of what he was sure was destiny. Though he was caked in the terra cotta dust of Gerald Field and the sweat of catharsis, he felt cleaner than any bath or shower could ever afford him. His was a cleanliness of the spirit, a psychic housekeeping that swept clean a decade of bruised sour feeling and unchecked romantic yearning.

Helga was really, deeply in love with him, and tonight he would finally have the opportunity to return her feelings honestly and without restraint. Regret seemed an alien word to him as he very nearly skipped his way through Hillwood; champagne joy sparkled noisily in the veins of his heartstrings.

He really couldn't place the intangible feeling of immortality that came with a certainty of his own pure truth. Arnold was not a poet. He was restricted in the articulation of this effervescence to big and broad ideas, however, they felt no less profound and verbose in his chest for their lack of thesaurus reach. He wanted to roar. A great yaulp was within him, high and huge, and with every step his legs eagerly kicked up under him in their own effort to skip to buoyancy, the barely-contained strength of his voice faltered and threatened to escape in massive keening bellows of mania.

So he yelled his fucking head off.

Uncaring of the alien presence of a very tanned, dusty looking grown man screaming and shouting incoherent whoops of pious ecstasy among the typical urban surroundings of Hillwood, an Arnold that felt younger than he'd ever been in San Lorenzo proceeded like a comet inexorably towards the sun to his home, the boardinghouse. In a little less than an hour, Arnold anticipated knocking Helga's socks off with the caliber of handsome he could unleash in a fine suit with his scruffy week's growth of beard cleaned. _She has no idea_, Arnold thought, imagining with nearly sadistic relish the anticipated look of visceral, physical amazement on Helga's face when she saw him. That look would make this whole trip worth it, and then some.

Excited cultivated within him. A new start, on the back of the roughest first year in this new decade of his twenties, was a gift he was unprepared for entirely. It consumed him, but he felt renewed by it just the same.

Finally settling down the ruckus in his throat, Arnold simply proceeded with maximum haste to his home, to a shower, to the hated and treasured time he would spend apart from Helga.

Something touched his thigh, and he had to remind himself he had a cellphone while he was absently investigating the tickling buzz with his errant hand.

His cellphone, an anchor to this real mortality of his, a brief window outside the escaped paradise of his Helga feelings.

_Ah yes, _he remembered his present. _I am still here where Lila exists._

His phone was heavy. Lila was calling him, the day after the party. After Helga's music, and her body, and the music he made with her body. He was answerable to someone still, a promised someone to whom he had already broken one promise.

His pace slowed to a wandering stroll with automatic control when he accepted her call.

"Hello Lila," he started the conversation, as much a greeting to him as it was private accusation, private request for forgiveness.

"Arnold, I'm ever so glad you took my call," she said, sounding tired but relieved. "I was fretful that my abrupt parting from our last conversation had been taken as a formal 'Goodbye,' and I have dreaded calling you again since."

"Oh, right. No, I didn't take it as that." Arnold dreaded telling her the truth of the night far more than Lila had dreaded calling him, he wagered.

"And I have been doubly sick because I tried to get the party called off, a desperate silly hopeless attempt, and I did it to keep you with me as much as I did it to spite Helga, and I'm miserable and sick. I feel so sick that I did that, Arnold, and I am sorry."

Arnold listened with the quiet patience of a hanged man.

"I wanted to make it up to you, the guilt just ate me up, that I could do something so sneaky and try to ruin your big welcome home party. I've never done a thing to try to hurt you, in my entire life, not once. Won't you forgive me? Please don't take me out of your life."

He had never heard her ask him something so direct before. It sounded small and meek from her, when she was anything but.

"I am so sorry if I ever hurt you," she begged, and the emotion in her voice was unmistakably real.

"Lila, it's okay." Arnold hardened his gut with the weight of what he had to tell her.

"So I'm forgiven?"

"Forget you ever did it, because it doesn't matter. It was sweet in a way. You really care for me, Lila, and I won't ever make you apologize for that."

"Oh Arnold," she sighed. She was silent for a beat, and then, "I'm in Hillwood."

His easy slow stride stopped on a heel, which lowered itself slowly while he felt a woozy wave of dizzy panic hit him.

"You're in _Hillwood?_"

"Yes, I took the redeye out of Atlanta and arrived early this morning. I'm staying with Olga and Miriam for now."

Panic panic panic!

"Why did you come here?" It was all he could manage to ask.

"To see you," she calmly replied. "And to help."

"Help? Help with what?" He was truly lost.

"I don't imagine you know too much about it, but," she began slowly. "Back in middle and high school, there was someone using the old name Gerald used to tell tall tales to terrorize us. Everyone. It was horrible."

"Fuzzy Slippers." He remembered the details Gerald had written him about the mystery and the adventure of the chase. He had wished he was in Hillwood to help, but that was one time he was not able to save everyone.

"Right. Well, I am afraid that...Arnold I really shouldn't tell you this over the phone. Can you meet me here?"

Arnold remembered the time. He had so precious little left to get ready and meet Helga for their date. But the guilt of his escapade with Helga pushed him to rationalize something he had no business deciding: he had time to spare for Lila.

"Sure, but it has to be fast, I have to be somewhere in an hour or so."

"Oh? Where are you going?" Surprise in her voice.

"I really shouldn't tell you this over the phone," he parroted, and prayed Lila had the brilliance to read between the lines and the mercy not to tell him she did.

"Well then you'd better hurry here to me."

Arnold picked up his pace back to his previous reckless haste, but turned left instead of right at the critical juncture. His feet took him to Lila, out and away from the little aglow walkway of his mind that led patiently to Helga's table. He sped up, and then hurried, and his legs were a whirlwind tumbling towards a past promise and the heap of regret he named Lila.

* * *

Olga was heavier than Arnold remembered, and very tired in her face.

"Hello Arnold," she had politely answered the door. Where time had harnessed Helga, it had obsoleted Olga. She resembled every painting Arnold had ever seen of the mourning Madonna in Latin America: a too-young face pulled oblong down towards the ground, pulled there by unspeakable tragedy. Mary meant "Ocean of Tears," Arnold recalled his mother Stella telling him, and Olga was for every inch of her face Mary.

She looked so similar to Miriam.

She had still managed to keep relatively in shape, he noticed, but the angular litheness of her frenetic youth had softened into a settled shape, a welcoming domestic body.

Arnold was led by a mostly silent Olga to the first floor guest room where Lila was staying. She made polite small talk about being glad to see him, and that he had become a handsome man, and she was certain she saw clearly what her little sis saw in him.

Something in her choice of words in that comment made Arnold hate her.

Miriam was nowhere to be found, and Arnold didn't ask. The house had the smell of a lot of cleaning supplies, and it was kept spotless of dust and mess. It was likely Olga, Arnold reasoned, who was so bent towards a life lived cleanly that she made every evidence of the collective mess around her vanish. It felt like a museum, and devoid of life everywhere but the guest room.

Lila was like the sun in a barren landscape.

When he saw her, he sucked in a breath of surprise. She was out of her chair, laying in repose on the large fluffy guest bed, hands folded on her waist and her eyes closed. Even when she lay so still Arnold wasn't sure she was breathing save for the gentle lift and fall of her bosom, she glowed with fire. Her radiantly powerful presence billowed out and down the bed, cascading with gravity like smoke under a closed door.

Arnold stood in the doorway watching her, not even noticing that Olga had escaped into some other silent corner of the house.

Lila breathed quietly for some time, and then, without opening her eyes, slowly turned a hand and held it out for Arnold to take. His body jerked forward in automatic obedience, but he hesitated, chewed his lip, and then went to stand next to her, his hand deposited into hers.

She was hot to the touch like branding irons.

"My Arnold," she softly spoke, and a smile was most imperceptibly on her lips.

"Hello, Lila," he began, struggling to find the courage necessary to be true. To be honest.

"My Arnold," she continued, speaking over him. "That is who put his hand in mine just now. There's a different Arnold that came here, but it was mine that touched me just so." Her green eyes opened, and found his.

"Lila," he felt emotion knot in his throat, the way it did when he was a little kid with an accidental knee scrape and his Grandpa encouraged him to 'Be A Man'; and though it stung and it hurt and he wanted to cry, obligation demanded he choke on it. So he choked.

"My Arnold wasn't at that party last night. My Arnold didn't even come to Hillwood. That was someone else. That was someone that hasn't been seen or heard in ten years. That was just some different Arnold, who had never met his parents, and had never loved me, and never asked me to be his wife."

Her voice shook.

"So I don't need to forgive anything that Arnold did. Because it wasn't my Arnold."

She knew. Arnold wasn't even partially unsure. She knew, and she was tactfully, romantically saving him from the awkward Hell of telling her.

"Explain your face," she commanded, calm eyes resting on the ugly wine bruising of trauma on his cheek where Helga had hit him.

"Helga socked me pretty good when I told her we were engaged."

Lila's smile took a twist of satisfaction. "I'll bet she did. Did she do anything else violent? Hurt anyone else?"

Arnold wasn't sure; the chaos of her apartment suggested that maybe she had. He didn't like to think of it. "I don't know, but I'm not really worried about it. I had it coming. I'm sure she took it all out on me."

"I would not be so sure," she replied. "Help me into my chair, please, my sweet Arnold."

Lifting her felt like lifting a coffin, though she weighed very little. Once she was in her chair, a practiced transition Arnold had helped her with countless times, she smoothed out the sundress she was wearing on her thighs and sighed.

"Arnold I am ever so sorry to have to tell you this," she began. "You know I have a bias in this scenario, and I know that there's probably some reason to doubt what I say, given how sneaky I had tried to be. But since that was done out of love, and you saw that and you forgave me, in your oh so gallant way, I have hope you will see that what I tell you is the truth and there's no reason for me to lie to you."

Something felt very strange to Arnold. He had nothing on his radar that she could be speaking so gravely about.

"What is it, Lila?"

Lila lifted her chin and grabbed eye contact with him, face as serious as he'd ever seen it.

"Helga is Fuzzy Slippers."

"Lila, come on, be serious."

"I am ever so serious, Arnold. It really is Helga. I didn't want to believe it myself; she's always been someone I deeply respected, even if we never had the opportunity to become good friends. And I certainly never imagined she could be capable of...of that."

Arnold removed his hand from Lila's, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Lila, I don't want to say something really rude here, but this seems like a jealous accusation that isn't based on any fact. I don't think you like Helga and I don't think you are as respectful of her as you say. I also think that is fine, and understandable given the circumstances, but it's not okay to pretend that isn't true."

Arnold didn't like the look on her face, it seemed far too serious. She only got that look when things were extremely real. She wore it as a child when her father, then single, was long out of work and bills were stacking up on the two of them. She wore it the week her father and stepmother had passed away, and she wore it for months after the accident. It chilled his impatience. It made him reasonable to her suggestions.

"Arnold I will be ever so patient with you right now because this is no doubt quite the surprise. I will be gracious and ignore the insinuation that I am ever not acting with your best interests in my heart. My feelings are less important than the truth right now."

Arnold remained standing impassive, arms crossed. She had explaining to do. "Hurry then. I don't have a ton of time to waste." He hated how dismissive he sounded of her time, but, Helga was probably already on her way to the restaurant.

"Olga? Miriam?" Lila summoned them like royalty calls her courtiers.

Arnold turned when the two women materialized into their conversation, moving into the room with obedient quiescence. If Olga had become elongated by time, Miriam had shrunk. He barely recognized the ninety pound stick figure that steadied herself with a yellowish leathery hand. Hard years had tanned her skin, dried it, shrank her entire. He thought it was sad.

"Tell Arnold what you found in Helga's storage boxes." Lila patiently watched Arnold's face. He looked at the two Patakis expectantly.

"Well, Arnold, you see," Olga began for the two of them. "While we three were going through little sister's old things, we found some of her old journals. We were going to make a collage out of her poetry and frame it for Mama's bedroom. Mama always loved Helga's poems."

"I can't believe you would violate Helga's privacy like that," Arnold scowled. "Whatever, go on."

Olga blinked heavily mascaraed eyes at the stinging rebuke, and glanced at Lila's stern face before pressing on.

"Well at Lila's suggestion when she arrived today, we went through the piles of journals quite thoroughly, and we found...this." Olga's hand extended, pressing a small leather black moleskine journal towards Arnold. It was very similar to the one Gerald had. Too similar.

Taking it into his hands, a bolt of anxiety twisted in Arnold's fingertips. Dare he look inside? He was terrified of finding something he couldn't forgive in those pages. A vast valley of the unknown spread out before him, and by cracking the pages of the book open, it would yawn into a chasm of disaster.

He put the book on the nightstand table without opening it and looked firm at Lila.

"I don't know what is in this book, and I don't need to see it. Helga is not Fuzzy Slippers."

Lila seemed tired again, no trace of disappointment in her soft movements, but merely an exhaustion.

"Olga, please open the book for him since he refuses to confront the truth in front of his face."

Arnold was starting to get angry again, a bitter resentment for the inconvenience of a new dramatic development souring him towards them all.

And then Olga opened the book.

* * *

Helga stormed the sidewalk like an approaching army towards the battlefield, flanked by Rhonda, Nadine, and tiny Eugene in behind. The trip had been fraught with narrow escapes and unlikely turns of sudden fortune as they dodged the pursuing crowd of rabble whipped up into vengeful frenzy by Sid and Stinky.

And now the goal was in sight, and Helga was intent to visit some devastation upon the household Pataki. She imagined herself as a great wind, pushing forward to bless the roof of this house with an ancient bellows of fury. She named herself Fury and had bloody-minded vengeance girded about herself as her Aegis. Her teeth were lightning; her hands spears; her voice was ashen destruction.

And somehow still the doorway she had herself never crossed, that immortal gateway into a life she eschewed as a shunned stranger loomed with towering sentinel strength before her. A fight she had not yet fought, choosing instead to flee. The unfinished business with Olga and Miriam had been another source of regret in the young woman; Helga did not respond well to regret.

And yet still, she had to press forward if there was going to be a solution to this nightmare. She was already going to be woefully late for her date; she prayed Arnold was forgiving of tardiness, because if Arnold had showed up late she would not have been so gentle.

"Helga, let's get this farce over with," Rhonda grumbled, breaking the moment of internal hesitation within Helga, bringing her to the present.

"Just give me a second, Rhonda, I'm getting in the zone." A blatant lie, but told boldly enough to be believable.

"We are going to need to see this little plan of yours first hand or there's no way anyone in Hillwood will believe you. We're the only reliable witnesses you are gonna get."

"All you three have to do is make sure that everybody gets a copy of what goes down in there. Any idiot could do it."

"I still can't believe that is your grandiose plan. Helga, I expected better of you," Rhonda sneered. "It's so expected, so cliche. You think you can get her to confess everything while you secretly record it?"

Helga continued to hesitate at the doorway, definitely sure her plan sucked. But she was at too great a disadvantage, with only barely twenty minutes of experience in this fight. She barely even knew that she was truly up against Lila until the magic shop, and even though she had considered Lila her rival for the majority of her existence, it wasn't until just now she realized just how powerful a foe she had in Sawyer.

The situation was just a hair south of nightmarish. If Lila really _was_ Fuzzy Slippers, and Helga had no doubts at all in that regard, it meant she was far and away the trickiest person in Hillwood. Helga had always thought of herself as an absolute mastermind in her schemes, but once Arnold left there was little she cared about enough to actually scheme about. The Prom Queen thing was a notable exception, but beyond that one outstanding instance, Helga's practice at layering subtle lies and misdirecting behaviors all to achieve some distant, unknowable goal had basically rusted into stillness. Without Arnold to pursue, she had nothing to be faithless and deceitful about.

And suddenly she had to summon up all those hibernating skills and form a rudimentary defense against what was surely the death knell. Lila wasn't playing around. Helga suddenly felt a little regret for the bold trash she talked when she caught Lila on the phone the night before. She had spoken brashly, and if she wasn't Helga _fucking _Pataki, she's have been speaking out of turn and out of her depth. Luckily, even on her _worst _day, Helga was beyond a match for Lila. She knew she could win; she just had to make Lila make one simple mistake.

She had to get her to talk.

It was the only way; the circumstantial evidence was so overwhelmingly stacked against her, the only way to shake it was a verbal confession, candidly captured, secretly broadcast, and permanently archived. Helga hated how _Hollywood_ it felt.

If Lila Sawyer was Fuzzy Slippers, she had been adopting that identity without a single ounce of suspicion from anyone in Hillwood for over a decade. The disguise was so perfect, so practiced, and so thorough, it would take a master of manipulation and rhetoric at least Lila's equal to undo the mask. It would take everything Helga had, brute force and precision and flexibility all at once. And she had no time to practice. Simply stated, Rhonda was right. Helga's plan was shitty because it was _no_ plan. She just intended on going in there and making the confrontation so legendarily awful that Lila spilled her guts. _Somehow._

For just a second, she doubted herself.

There had been four times that Helga had totally given up - four times, and four only, and she had a good reason for each occurrence. It didn't make their memory any easier.

The first time was when she had gotten teased as a three year old for having a crush on Arnold. Giving in to the pressure of being judged by others for her true feelings had started the spiral of self-flagellation that she was _still_ in the throes of. In the face of ridicule for what was really a perfectly natural emotion, Helga had chosen Flight. It was the first surrender, and it was the worst, because it had done the most damage and set up a pattern of running from her feelings.

The second time she had given up belonged to Arnold again-when Arnold had asked her if she _really_ meant what she said on that rooftop, the fear of rejection and the empty yawning void of what would come _after _that rejection terrified her from the lines of battle. In full retreat, she routed, waving her white flag and yielding all the ground she had conquered, lying to her boy and denying her true feelings. She could have been brave, could have faced the music. Her choice was surely the _practical_ one, and in the end, her denial had spiraled a series of events into place that ended with Arnold _kissing her_, but it was still giving up. She chose Flight.

The third time was also about Arnold-but it was different from the rest. When Arnold asked her, that fateful day, what she thought about him moving to be with his parents finally, Helga had chosen Flight for the third and final time. She remembered with awful clarity the very moment it happened.

Arnold was sitting pensively, looking despairingly adult in his ten year old frame. A decision he had never anticipated making was before him, and Helga knew it was about her as much as it was about him. That thought sent her mind into dizzying pleasure, a confusing mixture of joy at even being included in his decision making process, and a horrible sticky fear that despite that massive milestone, she'd still end up on the losing side.

But as Helga had watched the boy she loved struggle and wrestle internally with his decision, the choice began to make itself obvious to her. Moment after moment, the terror-logic of his decision unfolded neatly across her consciousness, and a future bereft of his presence made itself known in the corners of her sight.

Arnold had his hands folded together, thumbs worrying over each other with uncharacteristic anxiety. She'd never seen him so _upset_, even though only days before he had finally found his parents after a decade of wishing harder than anything to find them. _He should be happy right now,_ she lamented as she had watched him. It wounded her to see him so eaten up by the burden of her existence in his heart. It shattered her to be the fulcrum of his misery, and yet she loved him so she would willingly wound him still.

"My parents want me to stay with them, now that they've reunited with me and everything." He began speaking for them. _Arnold you saint._ Helga loved him for being the braver of the two of them at that moment.

"Sounds great, Football Head," she heard herself casually remark. "It's what you've always wanted." She couldn't believe the words she was saying. _What am I doing? Lying to him again-only this isn't a total lie. _That was what made it harder, the truth of it.

"Yeah, it's great. Only I would have to leave Hillwood." He spoke slowly and carefully in the way Arnold did when he was trying to imply something unpleasant.

"I imagine so, seeing as how you guys are basically the Swiss family Robinson and all."

"Maybe for a really long time," he pleaded. "Miles and Stella, mom and dad, I mean, they said I would probably be tutored privately by them or go to local schools part time while they worked. Their work is important, Helga, they are saving thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands."

"I'm in no doubt that they are really wonderful, Arnold. So what," she swallowed, finding it hard to ask this next part. "What's the problem?"

"I would have to leave Hillwood, for a long time. All my friends, grandma and grandpa, the tenants! And you."

Helga writhed internally at her inclusion, a frenzy of ecstasy she had never imagined, coiled around a heavy guilt.

"Yeah, Arnold, that's real sweet and everything, but this is what you have always wanted. You can't give up on that." Saying that was the hardest thing she had ever done.

"Helga, what about that kiss? What about what we said in the jungle? Am I supposed to just put that aside?"

For reasons her young mind could only begin to articulate, she was very mad at Arnold.

"Yes of course you are!" She shouted. Arnold stared at her with dumb shock.

"What are you, stupid?! We are ten, TEN! Ten years old. I say I l-love you, you...you s-say it back. So what. We are j-just kids! They are your _parents _you stupid boy. Arnold, you're not an orphan anymore. Don't let anything stand in the way of your happiness. Especially not me."

Arnold looked at his hands, and the sad frown she saw take over his normally peaceful quiescence shook her into terrified reverence. She did that to him. The realization hit her in her guts.

"Arnold," she softened. "Arnold, I think you need to remember what this whole adventure was about. It's not a choice. It's about making your life happier. Better. There are some children who long for their parents to divorce, like me. There's children who only have one parent, like Lila. And then there's orphans, like you, and, and there's nothing this world has done that was just or right except give you back your parents. You are going to stay with them. It's not even a choice and you know it isn't. You are just pretending it is in the hopes that the choice will get made for you."

Suddenly Arnold looked up at her, no mirth in his face.

"Stay with me."

Helga's legs gave out instantly. She was on her knees, hands struggling to find purchase while the words he spoke to her robbed her of every strength and armor she had ever wore. She felt dizzy, so dizzy she felt like she wasn't even on the ground, but floating above herself in an adrift haze. Reality hit her hard, then, and it came with Arnold rapidly making his case while she listened, dumbfounded.

"You said yourself you wish your parents would split, so why stay with them. Your mom doesn't care, your dad is probably going to be glad to get rid of you," Arnold stopped suddenly, aware he had gone too far by the turned look of wounded grief on Helga's plain features.

"Oh Bob would LOVE to get rid of me, Arnold," she bitterly spat at the floor, unable to look at him for the pain. "Miriam too, just to be rid of the last nag of reality that still gives two craps about her. Oh criminy, Arnold, you don't have to remind me how little I am wanted by the Patakis, so _please _spare me your oh so convincing argument. But you don't _really_ expect me to drop everything and come live in the freaking jungle with you, do you? We are ten years old. Bob would _never_ allow a Shortman to raise me, first of all, he'd rather send me off to boarding school if only he wasn't so cheap in my regard. Miriam would object because she would look bad if she _didn't. _You aren't thinking straight because you kissed me. I get it, it was your first real kiss with someone you _like _like. Big, heavy stuff, trust me. After the first time I kissed you, I could barely think straight around you for weeks. So since you aren't thinking straight, let me do it _for _you, Football Head."

Helga stood, pushing her flashing despair to the earth at her feet while she rose away from it. Someone had to think of Arnold, and like always, it had to be her.

And she was _terrified_ of leaving home for him, just in case he changed his mind and came to his senses and realized how terrible she really was.

"You're going to stay here, with your mom and dad. I am going back to Hillwood. Our lives will go on, maybe a little bit less interesting, but, they'll go on regardless. You'll get tall, and probably ridiculously good looking, and win a Nobel peace prize at sixteen for solving world hunger. I will go write poetry in obscurity and get the hell out of Hillwood as soon as my legs can carry me. Maybe you can visit, soon? But, your home is with your parents. Mine is not."

By the time she finished her short speech, Helga was as convinced of her own sad prediction as she was hoping Arnold would be. He had to forget her. And she was positive he would.

Arnold hadn't answered her for a long time. He had finally stood, and crossed the short distance to stand on his toes and kiss her cheek. "I'll write," is all he could say, and left her.

It was ten years later he walked back into her life, and she chose flight for the fourth time.

She wouldn't run this time. She would Fight.

"Alright." Helga growled, teeth bared and ready to fight. "Let's bury this bitch."

* * *

Arnold left the building, feeling gutted. He had never imagined that this kind of confused pain was possible.

_Helga is Fuzzy Slippers?_

Just hours before, he had nearly confessed his love for her, and now, he had to face the possibility that she was in fact the horrible secretive rumor monger that had ruined many of his friends' lives. Lila had shown him nearly irrefutable evidence; there was no mistaking that poem.

And yet, something felt so _wrong_ about the scenario.

He couldn't place it, but a nag of memory chirped against his worried conscience, fretting the frayed edges of a mind harrowed too often and too acutely. He didn't _want _to believe Lila. He promised he would go out and find Helga, and get this mess settled, and hastened to leave her despite her desperate and needy pleas.

Out in the open air, Arnold merely struggled to understand which was was up. Nothing made sense to him, because reality had dealt him a blow so severely he couldn't reconcile it with the rules he was used to following. If up was not down, then how could Helga be Fuzzy Slippers? It could not be; his mind wouldn't accept the evidence directly in front of his eyes.

Even still, he doubted.

The doubting was torture beyond compare. No pain was as sweet as this, the doubt of his lover, a confused and trusting doubt. _You didn't do this, Helga, _he pleaded internally, quite desperate for it to be the case that she hadn't.

Even still, he had to confront the possibility that she was in fact the nigh demonic influence over Hillwood, secretly orchestrating disaster and ruin on everyone and everything around her. Ruining marriages. Shutting businesses. Ending careers. Destroying friendships. Nothing was sacred to Fuzzy Slippers, _except _that the culprit, whoever they were, never once attacked Helga.

It couldn't be a coincidence.

Not with her poem in the journal.

_What do I do if it is her?_ He gasped for breath when that question hit him, and he had to sit down. What would he do? Did he still love her, if she was so terrible? Could he forgive her? _Should _he?

Moaning in place, Arnold held his hands to his eyes and tried to imagine a life at her side despite her secret identity. It felt awful. There was nothing but misery and blood down that path. And yet, when he attempted to imagine a life absent her presence at his side, a pain more deadly flashed within his breast, and he nearly fainted for the shock of the sensation.

He didn't trust that it wasn't her.

He despaired to realize it, but a different, younger Arnold would have believed her, and he didn't.

Smashing his fists on the sidewalk where he sat until they were red and bloodied, Arnold mourned Helga before she ever knew he made the choice. There was no way he could forgive this, if it was her. And if it wasn't, he was certain he couldn't forgive himself for not believing in her.

He couldn't be with her. Not because of Lila, not even because of Helga, but because of him. A drastic difference was inside Arnold, now an adult with many years of horrible experiences under his belt, and he was too different and too dirty to love her as purely and as completely as he had at age ten. They were different people now, he realized through his tears, and their past was not their future.

Hiccuping his first sob, Arnold began to lament the passage of time, and his inevitable crawl towards isolation, and the lost love of a girl that had always loved him even if he never returned the favor for a single day. Without Helga, he wasn't sure what he was, but the silhouette of what remained saddened him profoundly.

Openly crying at the side of the road now, Arnold Shortman broke up with Helga in his heart, and buried himself in the agony of the loss. So empty, so bereft was he, that he didn't even notice Brainy's can pull up, the side door slide open, or Gerald pull him into the van.

He was only dimly aware when Phoebe and Gerald urgently rushed to tell him the story of how Brian had been the first Fuzzy Slippers, and relinquished the name to Lila at her request when she moved to Hillwood. He was tear-sodden and nodding dumbly when they told him Lila's enormous, circuitous plan, and the intended target of all her secrecy: Helga. He bawled openly to their absolute bemusement when they told him how Helga was innocent, and they were on their way to nail Lila with the truth, because he knew it didn't matter.

He couldn't be with Helga, because his heart was too weak and small to believe in her.

* * *

The house was quieter than Helga expected when she stepped in. The front door was unlocked. She was expected, that much she knew, but the total lack of security and violence inside the house just felt totally wrong. She felt very keenly that this was definitely a trap.

_No hesitation now, Helga old girl. Time to ferret this harpy out and get the fireworks flying._

She started to call out for Lila, but the sudden appearance of her wheelchair, swinging into view around the kitchen door and turning to face her directly, shut her up. Helga's blood boiled the instant they made eye contact, but Lila's impassive green gaze met her strength for strength.

"Welcome, Helga. I was expecting you sooner. You just missed Arnold."

_Arnold was here? Shit. _Helga feigned a smile, and lied. "I know."

Lila didn't seem phased, as if she had suspected as much perhaps, or that she saw through the lie. "Why don't you join me in the kitchen. Miriam poured us some tea when I mentioned you would be joining me this afternoon."

"Did she now?" Helga flinched when Lila mentioned her mother, and Lila noticed it. Helga saw the look of awareness in her empty green eyes and fumed. "Better check it for flammability, Miriam's never been able to resist spiking anything."

She imagined hauling Lila's much smaller frame out of the chair and suplexing her into the walls while she strode powerfully forward, pushing her chest up straight and projecting as much invincibility and strength as she was able. Lila nudged her chair out of the way for Helga to pass, and she snorted a short snarl to count the victory.

Straddling one of the cushioned kitchen chairs casually, Helga draped her arm over the front of the back of the chair against her chest, planning to keep the barrier between them both for Lila's safety and to hide her breathing. She needed to seem calmer than she felt, because Lila had her beat handily in the icy and cold department.

Lila wheeled across the kitchen to settle opposite Helga, and steadily poured two cups of tea that were set out on their saucers, sliding one across the table in silence to Helga, and then folded her hands on the napkin in front of her.

They stared across the table at each other in silence, calculating the weight and cutting edge of each word they were preparing to speak. Like two ancient swordsman weighing the potential outcome of each parry and strike before the killing blows were traded, the bulk of their battle seemed to be taking place invisibly in the spaces of their imaginations. Helga needed this extra time to prepare her weapons so hastily girded; Lila took the time to hone the killing sharpness of hers.

Helga didn't want to be the first to flinch and speak, but the overwhelming rage she felt over the whole affair was draining her patience quickly. She still didn't have her perfect opener, the blitzkrieg gambit that set Lila off balance and started her down the tragic slope towards unraveling her secrets. She needed time to prepare that exchange, and the only way she thought to buy time was to shock Lila into outrage. But she wanted Lila to speak first, to give that ground in front of her feral fury, to show weakness.

Lila was stonelike. Helga hated her for it, but the shapely little bird had a nearly perfect mask of impassive emotionless disappointment. The superior way she seemed to be regarding Helga, as if this was a hunter merely ending the misery of his trapped prey, set Helga's jaw to clenching and unclenching subconsciously; Lila's green eyes flicked to her cheeks, and Helga noticed she was doing it and reddened in her face.

She flinched first.

"You know Arnold goes completely silent when he comes?" Helga spat suddenly, offering the juicy factoid about the object of their mutual affection rapidly. "Oh there's a mess of sexy groaning first, don't get me wrong, but oh man the intense look in his eyes when he's inside you and he's in the moment! I'll never forget it. It's _priceless._"

Lila pinked, and seemed genuinely put off by the frank and deeply intimate jab by Helga, but then calmly lifted her teacup for a sip.

"Really, Helga, there's no need to get started with vulgarity. Besides, I lived with him for almost two years. I'm his fiancée."

She left it there; it was enough. It made Helga's hands shake with rage, but she steadied them by slapping her hands on the table suddenly. _That _made the waif jump, and look up in surprise.

"So let's cut the shit then, Sawyer, and get this _confession_ started."

Her rival dabbed her mouth daintily with her napkin, folded it, and nodded curtly. "Yes, whenever you feel like confessing your guilt, I am glad to hear it. Perhaps you could earn some grace and leniency by finally owning up to your years of dishonest misconduct. But that," she slowed, narrowing her green eyes for dangerous effect. "Won't be for _me _to determine."

"Confession? _Confession! _Oh, that's rich. That's true comedy. You should try a stand up routine with that material," she cruelly sneered. "Your bullshit stinks to high heaven. Lila. You know that it won't be _my_ confession today, Sawyer, because your web of lies is getting unraveled right here."

"You should taste your mother's tea," Lila offered. "I imagine it will be the last time you have the opportunity. She plans to disown you on my ever so regretful recommendation. I simply couldn't bear to see her in pain over your lies and your awful, brutish behavior again. It pained me oh so much to do it, but, I had to keep her safe from you."

So there it was, her final blow. Lila's final slap to Helga's face. To get disowned. A piece of her heart felt broken, perhaps the last valve she had left that still recalled Miriam fondly. She was surprised by how it hurt. If that was all Lila had left, however, Helga felt like she could still win this.

"I ain't drinking a damn thing that faithless woman serves, and I ain't gonna let you dodge my accusation. _You_ are Fuzzy Slippers."

"The irony that you, utterly defeated, would attempt to so weakly accuse _me_ of your own misdeeds after all your careful years of practice and planning, when I have been your most ardent supporter for years and have respected you more than anyone, even more than _Arnold_, is as tragic as it is useless. I know you feel cornered, Helga, but, really, it's such a weak and predictable move to try to pin the blame on your romantic rival. You have no evidence to support your claim, and nothing less than a mountain of it pointing at you. Including tangible, hard evidence."

Helga blinked in furious surprise. "You don't have any physical evidence," she growled. "You don't have _a goddamn thing."_

Lila watched Helga's forehead vein throb, and seemed almost about to say something, but then she slipped a black journal from under the table in front of Helga, and tapped it with a manicured nail. "I do."

She finally understood the missing pieces of this labyrinthine puzzle, staring at the black journal book set in front of her.

"You've been planning this for years," Helga laughed in surprise, a strange giddy elation in her throat. She had her neck in the hangman's noose since they were kids, and never knew it. "Two copies of the same book, Sawyer you fucking supervillain."

"Is this my book, Helga? That is passing strange, considering you literally wrote your name in it." She turned the book over in her hands, flipping through the pages with an ease that betrayed her familiarity with the text to Helga. This was clearly some sort of mental trick, some strange double psychic reach around intended to get Helga confused and helpless. Lila continued to pretend she was ignorant, stopping on a page near the center.

She started to read.

_"H is for the head I'd like to punt.  
__E is for every time I see the little runt.  
__L is for longing for our first kiss.  
__G is for how good that longing is.  
__A is for Arnold. Doi!"_

She set the book down and calmly regarded Helga, who's mouth was open in a snarling smile. "Oh, you're _good_, Sawyer, you're so fucking _good_, and I owe you an apology for not seeing how good you are and always were. Using my own poem to implicate me. Too damn good."

"I didn't write that; Helga, that is your poem. It has your name in it. It's about wrote it when you were nine, before I even met you. And even more, it's also the cipher that was missing in the copy I helped Phoebe and Gerald get when we chased you that fateful day in high school. Once I saw this poem, missing from the other book, I instantly knew this was the key. The letters in your name are replaced with the first letter of the last word of each line, really, quite genius. It made the writing in the book just close enough to jibberish to confuse Phoebe. You knew it would be the right touch of simple and confusing to work against her tendency to overcomplicate problems. You knew that, because you're her best friend. Or, maybe, were her best friend. I don't know how she'll react to this."

"Interesting theory, told boldly like the faithless liar that you are, Lila. But here's the problem; _that's not how the poem goes._"

Lila blinked, a twitch at the corner of her mouth. "It's your poem, Helga, how am I supposed to know?"

"That's the thing. That's _not_ my poem. The third line actually goes '_L is for longing for our _firstest_ kiss._' You got cocky. You messed it up. I don't know how you even know that poem, but clearly, you don't know it well enough."

"And so I am clearly the culprit because you wrote an alternate version of your own poem. Please, Helga, don't be so transparent. You're reaching for straws. Besides, Arnold's already seen this. He recognized the poem instantly. I'm ever so afraid the effect it had on him was deeply painful for me to see. I still love him, regardless of his confused heart. Which was only thrown into _deeper_ turmoil by the vast web of lies you've woven."

"Oh, so you wanna talk Arnold instead of address how badly you fucked up? Alright, I'm all ears. Please, tell me, what _did_ Arnold say when he saw your amateurish attempt to capture my brilliance?"

"Arnold said some very drastic things. He wants to leave Hillwood tonight."

Helga's gut dropped. It had to be another lie. Lila was a serpent, a peddler of falsehoods. And yet, the reason she was so successful was her expertise in blending the false with the true. What if she was telling the truth? What if Arnold hadn't seen the fatal flaw in her mockery of her poetry? What if he didn't _trust_ that she was incapable of doing something like this? Everything was over, if that was the case. There wasn't any way she could trust Arnold to trust her ever again, if he believed for an instant that she was responsible for all that Fuzzy Slippers had done. He _had_ to know she was innocent, even in the face of well crafted and damning evidence.

She was deeply worried this confrontation had already failed, despite having caught Lila in a fatally clumsy error.

"I'm so sure," Helga feigned a lack of concern. "Arnold probably swore off ever seeing me again, and dropped to his knee and proposed a second time."

"Yes." Lila's smile was as sweet as it was hateful. "That's exactly what Arnold did."

Helga's hands curled into white knuckled fists.

"Remember the last time you and I had a confrontation, Helga? It was high school, before I moved to be with Arnold. You were so angry at me, and so impotent. I was just reminded of that moment, because just like then, you are a paper tiger. Your threats are empty and your façade has fallen. You've lost. Utterly and completely, you have lost. Arnold renounced every word of affection and love he ever spoke to you as a lie. He cursed your name and spat on the ground. He _begged _me, on bended knee, to forgive his errancy and his forgetful heart. How fast he flashed my engagement ring back onto my finger, after I had so solemnly removed it also at his request. Like my dutiful knight he swore me loyalty, and pleaded to be worthy enough to be my husband."

Helga's vision was almost totally blurred, a whirlwind of pressure and violence swimming in her awareness and threatening to crush Lila where she sat. The Goddess of light and hunger inside her shrieked to be released, the lioness roared for her chance to feast on this empty small thing. Helga heard drumming in her ears, and was only dimly surprised it was her own heartbeat calling her to action. She gripped the chair she was in as if her hands were all that kept her anchored to this Earth. She wanted to drink Lila's blood under the witness of the moon, and howl her ghost into the sky. She wanted to see the dance of her jugular under her teeth. She wanted to rip her apart. She had never felt such intense violent urges while also still being in total control over herself; in every instance prior, she succumbed to the manic fury in her heart. It was with cold precise calculation that she kept her bounding muscles in check, their twitch in her forearms visible beneath her skin. With grit teeth she weathered Lila's empty falsehoods, they _must be falsehoods_ or else all was already lost. She wouldn't let Lila win, and goad her into hitting her. Then, Helga would really lose.

She reached into her pocket while Lila finished her speech, and turned on the recording app on her phone.

Lila pressed on, clearly eager to get Helga to act out her fury. It would be how she cemented Arnold's heart against her. Helga knew she couldn't actually do it, or everything was lost.

"You know why you lost, Helga? It's because I am better than you. I have always been more than your equal. And where I spent years getting better, you let your cowardly heart stagnate and finish."

"Is that what you think I did, Lila?" Helga needed to keep her going, no matter how furious and angry and hateful she became. She had to get Lila to spill it.

"I saw it happen! It was pathetic. I hated you for it, because you had this limitless potential, as great as mine, and you squandered it. Rock music and a public university and no Arnold. You were content to live like that. Are you kidding me? How dare you think you are worthy of him _or _my time?!"

It wasn't enough to convict her. That thought chewed within her just as much as her fury at Lila's audacious lies, but even worse were the totally accurate truths she was laying on Helga like heavy blows now.

"You were _never _there for him, you spent ten years making a fine habit out of not being there for him! And before that, what an oh so lovely time you had of bullying him and tearing him down every chance you could rather than say how you _really _felt. Oh no, Helga, you don't deserve one _inch_ of any amount of Arnold you got, you don't even deserve to look at him!"

Tears of an unimaginable anger pushed themselves fat and hot out of Helga's eyes and crossed her now scarlet cheeks. She felt dizzy she was so angry. Her shoes were scraping the ground beneath her like a newborn foal attempting to find her legs, desperate not to push off the iron springs in her toes and fill her teeth with Lila's face and her hands with Lila's neck. The outrage was so sublime, so pure, it lived in her like she was the skin covering the body it kept. When she saw Lila it was rage looking through her eyes to memorize the way the redhead's lips moved when she spoke with such hatred and anger. Helga almost felt like she was disassociating from herself, merely watching the scene play out as Lila hurtled insult after insult and her fleshy body writhed under the weight of every word, begging to be released.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel, a distant star, and all she had to do was navigate through the worst rage she had ever felt in her entire life, and quiet the dangerous riot of cosmos beneath her muscles long enough to get the confession from Sawyer.

And then, all bets were off.

Lila, for her part, kept pressing the attack, convinced she was finishing Helga off. "I hate you, Helga Pataki, I hate you more than I hate anything. You are the empty, dark reflection of what I could have been if I gave up, and look at you now, powerless and impotent and starving to kill me. You won't, because you know Arnold would never dream to speak to you again. Even after what he saw in the journal and the vows he promised me, you _might _have hope, and that what stays your hand. Your hands are too timid, you are gutless. You were only ever unafraid of hurting someone if it meant you couldn't be hurt yourself. Empty bully. Useless coward. This is your dirge, and I am ever so satisfied to be the conductor with her baton at the ready for the finale."

In the small, small part of Helga that was holding on and keeping her hand in her pocket on that record button, a light sparked. This was the way she got Lila to make her final mistake. She had to press that last point, somehow. With a snarl, she slammed her face on the table, squeezing her eyes shut and baring her teeth while she struggled to maintain enough composure to speak.

Lila didn't let her catch her breath. "There's no use crying about it now, it's too late for you. You may have taken Arnold from me for _one night_, and it'll be a night I can never take from him. I will concede that to you; I underestimated you and I thought him too good to betray me. But I swore I wouldn't let you get away with it, and now look at you. I _beat_ you. I didn't just win, it was a total disaster. You have _nothing _left. I even took your family away from you, not that you ever appreciated them when you had them to begin with. Do you know how _badly _I MISS MY MOTHER?!"

Helga looked up with her face red and wet with tears to see Lila standing over the table in her chair shakily, red-faced and eyes watery, a grimace of absolute hatred tearing her pretty face into an ugly toothy frown.

"Is that why you set me up over these years, Sawyer?! To get your _mother_ back?!" Helga's voice trembled with outrage.

Helga watched in sublime, agonizing awe as Lila unmasked herself. She lifted her hands up to her face in balled fists, pressing her wrists to her eyes and pulling at her hair. She trembled, nearly falling to sit in her chair with a single unsteady wobble, but remained standing and took a deep breath. Helga made sure the recording button was pressed when Lila's shriek pierced the room, long and high and releasing who knows how many years of desperate secret hatred.

"I hate you!" She finally shouted. "I hate you ever so much! I hate you because you remind me of myself! I hate you because there's nothing this world hasn't taken from me that it hasn't handed you! When I moved here my father had _nothing _and I didn't have my mother! And you had a rich dad and a cool older sister and your mom was _alive_ and you couldn't wait to get away from them all! And Arnold just wanted his family back, like me!"

Helga held eyes with her, also crying but for want of release. She couldn't take this anymore, she was about to break. She needed the confession!

"And now _I _am his family. Lila Shortman! It's _his _ring in my finger, and I took him from you just as I took your mother, and I am taking your friends. No one will even want to remember your _name!"_

_"You did this, Lila! Say it!"_ Helga shrieked, slamming her fist on the table and shaking with anger.

"OF COURSE I DID IT! I set you up, hook, line, and sinker! Of course I am Fuzzy Slippers you stupid bitch! I won, I am smarter and better than you, and I _won! WHO ELSE COULD DO THIS BUT ME?!"_

Helga's entire body sighed loose. She unfurled from her taut position cupped against the chair and table, and slowly, steadily slid her hand with the phone out onto the table. The record button was still pressed; several minutes ticking away on the counter. Enough to win. Lila's eyes slowly turned down to see the screen with a mad look of disbelief, as a man who has just been shot regards the sudden mortal wound. She shook her head once, and reached her hand out to grab the phone.

Helga snatched it away, and pressed the send button. "Too late," Helga laughed with a mucous nose, and dropped the phone to the floor with a cracking clatter.

"Everyone on that fucking imbecilic thread you started just got that recording. Rhonda has a copy for safe keeping just in case you can erase it with your weird fucking hacker shit." Helga leaned back in her seat, arms slowly spreading like wings around her. Hands curled like claws and wrapping themselves into hard fists. She held her hands straight up above herself, fists bared, and stared at the light of the kitchen while she felt the impossible gravity of the anger she had boiled beneath simply escape her through her eyes.

"And Arnold got a copy, too." Bitter laughter spilled from Helga, and she saw Lila slump weakly into her wheelchair without a word.

"You lost," Helga continued, slowly standing in her spot, shoulders slumping over from the stress of the cathartic confrontation, at last completed. "And now I can strangle you to death here on this kitchen floor, and nobody will say a fucking word to convict me. Understand, Miss Sawyer, your life is absolutely at my whim in this moment. I can so easily..._easily..._snuff your light out."

Advancing like a predator closing in for the kill, Helga stopped inches from Lila's chair, and turned it to face her slowly. Lila merely stared off into the middle distance, eyes a river.

Helga sank to her knees slowly, so she was face to face with Lila, her enemy, her former friend. Fuzzy Slippers. Lila Sawyer. The same monstrous person, hid beneath two different masks. Helga took Lila's face in both hands, and pressed with a dangerous strength into her cheekbones.

"I should drop you in a sack and drown you like a cat," Helga laughed, looking from each of Lila's green, bloodshot eyes in turn. "I should enact every horror you put in my mind with your absolute fucking _filth_, ten times over. I should kill you."

Lila's eyes betrayed that she still felt fear. Terror was in those stricken green eyes, so full of self pity.

"But instead, I am just going to let you go out into the street, right now, and let all your victims decide what to do with you. My victory is your punishment, and it's something you'll never forget. You hate me so much, _so_ much, that you couldn't help but drop the act and rub it in. That was your downfall. If you kept lying, I had _no way_ to beat you. My victory isn't just because I won, it's because _you lost._ And all I had to do was not hit you."

Helga's thumbs suddenly pressed over Lila's eyes, and the girl let out a small cry in surprise, her hands grabbing Helga's wrists. Helga pressed, very hard, gritting her teeth and hissing through them, trembling with bloodlust. For an instant, she relished how helpless Lila looked, and wanted nothing more than to pop her eyes and bash her head in. For an instant, that was what she was doing, until she suddenly let go, and a frightened and disarmed Lila helplessly grabbed her face in agony.

Helga stood without a word while Lila sobbed in her indignity, curled like an infant in her chair.

"Never forget I showed you mercy because I pitied you."

Staggering from the kitchen, Helga disappeared into the stairwell, marching up the stairs to find Miriam and Olga.

Nobody disowned Helga Pataki.


	16. Chapter 16 - If You Let a Child

A/N: Not much to say. The story continues towards the end. I apologize for the late updates. In a case of life imitating art, a series of disasters prevented my pen from moving.

Strangely, perhaps by serendipity, I hear Craig Bartlett is returning to Nickelodeon studios to finish The Jungle Movie. I never anticpated that _my entire fanfic_ would be invalidated so quickly.

Ah, well. Easy come, easy go.

Anyway, on with the show. I promise the angst will continue to flow, right up until the fluff explodes all over your dumb faces. I love you guys.

Keeping Arnold, Chapter 16: If You Let a Child Be a Child, You Ain't Doin' Her No Favors in the End

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." - Sun Tsu

* * *

Gerald watched with concern at the eerie quiet that had descended over his distraught best friend bouncing in the back of Brainy's van. No longer a savage wreck, Arnold now just seemed impossibly far away from them, in some place and time Gerald could only guess at.

He was annoyed with Arnold just as much as he was worried, however, because this should have been their righteous moment. Years of pursuit and dead ends and false starts would finally, for real this time, come to an end. Lila was Fuzzy Slippers, and her confession was caught on tape, and Helga's name was in the clear.

It should be a moment of triumph, but Gerald felt a sick emptiness where the joy should be, and the sober atmosphere in the van betrayed that there was no spirit of victory within. He wasn't alone in feeling cheated, short changed of his hard fought victory, but he was aware with no small amount of guilt that he was probably the only one that was also angry at Arnold.

The Arnold he remembered wouldn't just be sitting there dumbly, he would be trying to convince everyone that there was a logical and reasonable explanation for everything. He would be trying to temper the desire for absolute revenge. He would be getting everyone to see that even though Lila was guilty of years of monstrous abuse and lies, she was essentially still a good person trying her best, who should be shown mercy, even forgiveness.

The Arnold he knew as a kid wouldn't be silent. He would fight.

Gerald was just about to throttle Arnold when Phoebe broke the silence.

"Well, the city seems pretty intent to finish Lila off," she sighed, flicking her thumb over her phone's screen. Gerald could make out a wall of texts in the nearly city-wide mass text conversation. He had turned his phone's notifications off, so frequent and incessant were the updates rolling in. "Helga seems to be getting a bit of praise, as well. It seems the danger has passed."

"Not for Lila," Gerald scoffed. If Arnold wasn't going to speak up, he would.

Phoebe turned slightly in the shotgun seat of the van, regarding her boyfriend with a skeptical look. "Is that any of our concern, Gerald?"

"Damn right it is," he grumbled, and once again looked at Arnold with disbelief. Phoebe seemed to notice.

"He's just in shock. We all are reeling from the truth, Gerald."

"He's bout to get his ass reeled right out of the damn van," Gerald threatened. "Hey, Arnold, wake the fuck up. These women is crazy, you gotta step in and do the Arnold thing, man. Like, calm the crowd, speak some reason. Do _something_, man."

Arnold looked at Gerald, finally seeming to see him. "Right under my nose, Gerald. It was always right there."

"Under _your _nose? Maaaan, Arnold, you don't know how damn ignorant you sound right now. This shit has been going on under _our _nose, me and Phoebe's, for seven damn years. She even played us into thinking she _helped. _You didn't get played the fool nearly as much as we did."

"Arnold," Phoebe began, "The truth is that Lila has been deceiving us all about her true nature ever since middle school. But I think that the truth is perhaps a bit more complicated than it seems. I still don't understand her motive, maybe there's something you recall from your correspondences?"

Arnold rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, and then shook his head. "No, she never talked about this stuff. Mostly she just talked about how...how she felt."

"Like I give a damn about your damn love letters, I still don't get how she _did _it." Gerald was eager to get Arnold off the past, especially his sentimental letter writing.

"Well, as Brainy explained it, he was the original Fuzzy Slippers, who would slip Gerald urban legends and fantastic rumors he heard about or came up with. When he held the alias, it was just a fun way for the very shy Brian to interact with his friends without having to stand out. Gerald was chosen because he was the most popular and the funniest, but sometimes Sid got a few stories too. And he mostly grew out of it."

"Right, I got that part," Gerald nodded. "It's where Lila came in that I need to hear again. How did she know it was Brainy when none of us did?" He didn't need to hear again, but, Arnold had been spaced out the first time this was explained, and Gerald wanted to make sure his friend heard this.

Brian spoke up, surprising everyone.

"She caught me."

"Right," Phoebe continued after regaining her composure. "One day after Lila moved here but before Arnold had left, she caught Brainy slipping a story into Gerald's lunch during recess. She confronted him, but promised not to tell anyone, claiming it was because she really loved the stories Brainy spread for everyone to have adventures. And she kept silent for years, at least until middle school."

"That's when the real trouble began," Gerald explained to Arnold, who was finally listening.

"She returned to Brainy, but this time, told him she would be taking the name from him for her own. By this time, Brian and Helga were not speaking and Brian didn't care enough about the childhood pseudonym to protest. But, he made a critical error. In exchange for keeping her use of the name a secret, he made Lila promise to never spread any tall tales about Helga."

"Why did you do that, Brainy?" Arnold asked. He was clearly confused.

Brian didn't answer.

"Regardless, with the promise made, Lila began to revive the name of Fuzzy Slippers. Stories and rumors began to surface with that name attached. At first it was mostly innocent, but, it didn't last. The rumors began to become very specific and personal. Tragedy began to follow the name of Fuzzy Slippers. And Lila's leverage over Brian slowly built, until she could demand his compliance and assistance on threat of going after Helga."

"Lila...threatened you, Brian?"

"Yes." His answer was as final as it was curt.

"Her threats apparently began to become more and more frequent as Gerald and I started to close the distance on her. She was still eluding us, but, apparently, was growing weary of the chase and too cautious of being caught by happenstance. Rather than make a mistake, she orchestrated a false victory for us with Brian's help."

"Damn girl set us up to find the black journal and chase after Brainy, the supposed true figure of FS. We bought it. We thought we won."

"I had never anticipated the possibility of a second journal. Who writes redundant copies of their own encoded journal? I couldn't account for that level of suspicion and secrecy. We were just high schoolers, not international spies."

"She wrote the journal." Arnold said, not a question, but sudden understanding about something else he had seen.

"Damn straight she did. Every word. And unfortunately for us, Arnold, she kept writing." Gerald hoped Arnold would come back to them with this.

"Gerald is correct. Over the years of supposed silence, she's been keeping up with Hillwood news. Through us, other friends, Rhonda and the like. The gossip mill never died out, I am afraid. She has had ample material to collect. And now, after your sudden arrival, events catalyzed her endgame plan."

"Framing Helga." Arnold spoke with understanding a second time.

"The reason Brian's promise was so unfortunate was that it played right into Lila's hands. It suited her just fine to never strike at Helga. It allowed the absence of her attack to slowly implicate her, over time. Gerald and I noticed the void in her attacks in high school, but, the rest of Hillwood only noticed when Lila wanted them to." Phoebe removed her glasses to rub at her eyes. "She's so damn brilliant."

"And evil," Gerald sneered. He'd get Arnold to defend her, humanize her. He begged internally for there to be some piece of the old Arnold left. To say something in her defense.

Nothing from Arnold.

"As I said," Phoebe spoke to fill the empty space in the conversation where they all waited for Arnold to say something. "I still don't understand her motivations. It seems unfathomable that Lila would hate us all so much in secret to do this out of pure spite. Arnold, what do you think?"

"It doesn't matter," he shrugged, looking deflated. Gerald felt for an unbearable second that the man Arnold had grown into had become unrecognizable to him. He wanted to fight! An anger of retributive outrage courses in his limbs and jitters of energetic strength trembled beneath his skin.

"Arnold my man, forgive my fool ass mouth for what I am about to say," Gerald started, ready to lay into his friend and knock some damn sense into him if necessary.

"Oh my God, Gerald, Arnold, look!"

"Oh no," Brainy groaned, and tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

Gerald looked away from Arnold reluctantly, and leaned over the passenger seat and Phoebe's shoulder to see what could possibly be so important.

His mouth went dry. Helga was holding Lila up out of her chair, Lila's arm slung around Helga's strong shoulders and the powerful blonde's forearm cinched tight around the generous curves of Lila's waist. Lila's face wore an empty expression turned to the ground, and Helga's was a snarl of disgust.

He didn't see what the problem was at first. Not at first.

Lila's feet were supporting her - albeit shakily, and unevenly.

Rhonda, Nadine, and Eugene were sitting behind them on the Pataki stoop, Rhonda and Nadine animatedly discussing something, no doubt Lila's final dishonesty. Gerald turned his whole body to check on his wayward friend, ravenous for a change in his stoicism.

Arnold looked _confused. _Gerald couldn't place the precise emotion on his friend's face, but it wasn't anger. It looked more like what his sister's face looked when he told her Santa wasn't real.

"Lila?" He heard Arnold squawk, his voice a the tortured twisted metal of denial.

"Why are you standing up?" Gerald demanded, on the spot, blood hot and his teeth throbbing with anger.

"Oh this?" Helga casually shook Lila in her grasp, wiggling her back and forth cruelly. "She surprised me with it too when she stood up while she was shooting her damn fool mouth off. Don't worry, if I let go, she falls. She's not _completely _lying about being a cripple, only just _sorta _lying,"

Helga demonstrated. Lila made a sound not unlike a gurgle and a yelp, and fell to her hands and knees pathetically. It seemed she didn't have the strength or feeling necessary to support her own weight, but she was hardly paralyzed.

"There you have it folks," Helga continued with the lofty airs of a carnival barker. "The grand and invisible _Fuzzy Slippers_! Behold, the nemesis! Ha! Some nemesis. Ain't that right, _Lila?" _Helga punctuated her mocking tone with a forceful nudge of her foot against Lila's hip.

Gerald saw Arnold rush forward from behind him, and watched with confusing dismay as he knelt by Lila's side with concern.

Helga's fury was fully trained on Arnold as he rushed to Lila's side, her hot stare beating down on the back of his head. It looked like she was ready to pounce when Arnold finally spoke up.

"Did you hit her, Helga?"

Gerald was pretty sure Arnold was about to get his ass kicked.

"Does it _look _like I laid hands on her, Football Head? You think if I _had _hit her you'd still recognize her face?! After EVERYTHING she's done?!"

"Arnold, my man, no disrespect, but you fucking up everything right about now," Gerald drawled, feeling just as annoyed as Helga. She shot him an approving look, maybe for first time in their lives. "Lila's got an angry mob 'bout to come lynch her or worse, and you throw accusations at your girl? C'mon man think straight. This ain't the Arnold I knew."

"I'm just making sure Helga's completely clean," he said, lifting the silently thankful Lila by the shoulders to lean on him. "I didn't see any marks or anything, but I wanted to make sure everyone saw and heard Helga say she didn't harm Lila, and then Lila not even bother to disagree."

Lila shot her face up to stare with shock at Arnold. A pained crease in her forehead lead down to ugly bowed lines of a grimace beginning to peel her previously lifeless expression apart.

"No, Arnold, Helga didn't hurt me. She merely had the grace to humiliate me, and lay me and all my hopes and dreams low. You don't have to extract insurance of my cooperation and timidity; I lost. It's over; I'm done."

Gerald clicked his tongue, unsure. Helga seemed placated by the exchange, but the glances he kept catching Arnold cast at Helga made him uneasy. This _still _wasn't right - it was like someone pretending to be Arnold was putting on a show, but wasn't quite getting it right.

"I think it would be prudent if we all moved to interfere with Sid and his angry mob, and soon," Phoebe chimed up. "Arnold, you should take Lila to the airport and get her out of Hillwood. Quickly."

"What and leave her and Arnold alone so she can sink her claws in him again with more lies? Fat chance," Helga spat on the ground her hands flexing like predatory talons at the thought of them pairing off.

"Helga, I need to finish this," Arnold said wearily, his face full of disappointment and exhaustion. He was still sweaty and coated in the dust of Gerald field. "Don't worry, there's nothing she can say now that will change how I feel."

At this, Helga seemed to ease up, her furious expression softening somewhat. She set her jaw and squared her shoulders, nodding once.

"Fine. But you _better _still show up to our date dressed to the _nines. _You owe me, bucko."

A polite cough behind the trio brought everyone's attention to the stoop. Rhonda waved her long fingers delicately.

"Yes, hello, sorry to interrupt, but, you don't honestly expect us to allow Lila to skip town now that she's caught? Sid and his ruffians are repugnant brutes, of course, and beyond all condemnation we can offer for their vile and bilious violence, but we can't just let her _go. _Sorry, Lila, I love you darling but you have Hell to pay for what you've done to us. And you still haven't explained _why. _So unless you plan to take her to the Airport by driving over our bodies, she's not going anywhere."

An irreconcilable tension shivered through the gathered collection of old friends and new enemies, and Gerald counted the beats in his breathing before someone finally answered. It wasn't Arnold, but Eugene.

"Why did you do this, Lila? It just seems so unlike you, it's so sneaky and so _mean._ What was the point in exposing my affair with John? What was the point in outing Sheena? Didn't you feel bad for hurting your friends? For ruining our lives?"

Gerald saw genuine pain and concern on the elfin features of Eugene's face. The thought struck him that of anyone here, Eugene's life had been the most thoroughly wrecked by Lila's sick games, and yet he seemed the most poised and willing to accept apologies, offer amnesty, or grant forgiveness. That's just who Eugene was, at his core, and years of hard luck and ostracism from his friends had not diminished that core in a significant way.

So what had happened to Arnold that made him so...jaded?

Lila looked up from the ground to level a green-eyed sneer at Eugene with no trace of empathy.

"I'd like to see where you were now if I hadn't intervened, Eugene. Where his _wife_ would be. Would you still be falling for his tricks, stooping to the level of a lowlife _adulterer _if I hadn't spoiled it for you? And you think it is _my _fault that you were doing these things?"

Eugene didn't answer but seemed taken aback by the acid in her response.

"Or any of the rest of you for that matter. Sheena, it may have been wrong to expose your sexuality in high school, but it wasn't anything that wasn't already going to _come out_. You and Rhonda were engaged in a cold war that _none _of these senseless idiots could see, except for me. I may have destroyed your friendship but I saved half a dozen other hapless kids that would have been pulled into the crossfire."

Rhonda stepped forward once, her whole body already twisting into a single, percussive slap that struck Lila across the cheek with a resounding clap. Everyone seemed poised on the edge of violence, and Sid hadn't even arrived yet with his thirsty mob. Gerald realized he was holding his breath when Lila finally spoke again, shaking her head and moving her stinging jaw.

"Like Hell I will take the blame for being custodian of you awful people when Arnold left. I can't count the number of secrets I have yet to reveal or seen fit to allow see the light of day. Rhonda alone would warrant the entire city's wrath. If you all only knew how each of you is in secret. _Disgusting._

_"_And Hillwood is _still_ a paradise compared to what's out there. How do any of you know what the world is like_?"_

As she began her final proclamations, Lila commanded Gerald and everyone's attention with all the zealous magnetism of a Baptist preacher. Nobody could tear their eyes off her terrible radiance, not even Helga.

"Do you know that the world is a foul _sty? _Do you know that if you rip the fronts off houses you'd find _swine? _This world is a Hell, what does it matter what happens in it? Listen to me! Use your wits, learn something. You wake up in the world and you know perfectly well that there's nothing to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day, and at night you sleep your untroubled ordinary little sleep filled with blissful, _stupid _dreams. And I brought you _nightmares_."

Lila lifted her chin, looking down on them all from over the bridge of her nose, a gawking Arnold staring up at her face with the captivated slack of jaw that betrayed an almost religious awe.

"_There's so much you don't know."_

Her spell hung over them like the Sandman's fog, trembling through their nerves and pinioning them to their positions. Gerald could not fully realize that what froze him to his spot was a feral, primordial instinct, a shared pack awareness that stretched back far into the evolutionary mists to touch when humanity's distant ancestors required a visual preparedness to spot predators. The shiver of fear in his spine that twisted and flopped his guts when Lila stared him down from her position, propped up by Arnold, was the same fear a mouse felt when it stared into a cat's eyes. It was a reptilian thing, an ancient magic that tore itself twisted from the womb of life when the Earth was yet still young and hot.

Lila was an Apex Predator, with no known natural enemies but others of her kind.

And Helga Pataki was standing right there, blinding in her own terrible radiance, the only thing more dangerous in all of Hillwood than Lila Sawyer.

Animal noises left Helga as she curled herself like a fist around Lila's form, hauling her out of Arnold's grasp with both arms and tearing her away from the crowd violently, wrists around her waist. Lila, for her part, seemed startled by the sudden manhandling but didn't make any sound or noise of protest, placidly accepting her rough treatment at the hands of her captor. Helga stomped three steps hauling Lila's rag doll form away from the group, and dropped her like a sack of flour into the street, a good foot away from the curb. She stood over Lila, who fell in a heap immediately. Helga was audibly hyperventilating, a furious wheezing in her chest betraying that she was only just _barely _in check.

A terrible wind escaped her, as a shriek of every kind and color roared from Helga's overworked lungs and blasted Lila as if she meant to shiver her apart with the very sound of her roar. Her fists stuck out from skinny wrists, pushing out behind her as she lifted onto her tiptoes like she was on slowly expanding springs. Spittle flew from her tooth-baring scream, the outrage and malice rushing out of her and blistering her cheeks a deep ruby red.

Gerald imagined she squeezed every last drop of air out of her lungs before she finally finished screaming.

Everyone stared at Helga in the roaring silence that rushed behind her yell, which was just as quickly filled with the curious shouts of strangers and the odd car alarm. He'd never heard a more blood-curdling sound.

Helga lifted her hand to point accusingly at Lila, and began _her_ own particular brand of magic.

"Look at you! Look at YOU! Lila Sawyer - Fuzzy Slippers - WHOEVER you may be, look at _you _now. Cast aside in the street like yesterday's trash! No Arnold to pick you up now, no Brainy to hide behind, nobody but you and yourself for company. How many faces you got, Lila? How many voices and masks? Think you could stand to speak to a few? Maybe a dozen; maybe all of them, I don't _care_. But _you_ should care, you should be glad you have so many pretty masks to wear and people you can be, because YOU is all _you're _ever gonna get again. And I'll _personally _see to it that you get your fill. I will be the maître d in your banquet of pain, the guide clown to your funhouse hall of mirrors, _gleefully _busy to position every mirror to show you aaaaaaaall the sides you seem to have. I'm gonna be fucking _busy, _too, because lord knows there's so many Goddamn Lila Sawyers that I just don't know how you'll ever find a place to start, much less find a way to _meet them all._ And _oh, _how I cannot wait to see you finally break, Sawyer, when all that is left is the empty skull you hang these masks from and you're finally spent, no more faces and no more Lilas left to see. _That _is when you'll finally see me again, staring back at you, ALWAYS Helga, always me, _never _anything or anyone else. Helga Geraldine Pataki will be the last person you see, because from here on, it's just your dollhouse and everyone you put in it. Take a _good _look! I'm the last real thing you're ever gonna see."

Gerald didn't even notice when Sid and the unruly mob had shown up, but he noticed them now, equally as silent and transfixed by Helga's curse as she spat it word by word, syllable by syllable. Any thoughts of vengeful violence they might have harbored seemed momentarily suspended by the power of Helga.

It was Arnold that dispelled the mysterious silence.

"Helga," he patiently began, his voice stern and soft. "That's plenty."

Helga whirled on him, her face a twisted rictus of rage, but Gerald was shocked when her features calmed suddenly. Then he saw Arnold's face.

He'd never seen this person before. A dark countenance and terrible grief had transformed Arnold into a version of himself more grave and grim than Gerald had ever imagine possible. It was like looking into the face of a prisoner of war, a distant and angry and hollow cast to his eyes. Helga had not calmed because she saw that Arnold was stopping her from giving Lila her due; Helga had calmed because she saw that Arnold needed to take his turn.

The tall blonde young man stepped into the street, the crunch of his baseball cleats on asphalt the only sound he made. Lila didn't look up at him, but seemed to keep her eyes on his shadow as it loomed over the twisted wreckage of her form.

"You're not sorry, are you." He didn't give her time to answer. "I wish I could pretend that I don't understand you. I wish there wasn't a part of me that thought _'Yeah you know what these assholes deserve this,'_ because it means a part of me, a small part, somehow ended up like you. And after I see how we treat our oldest friends now, with angry mobs and pack violence and vicious gossip, maybe you were right to shake things up a little and show us all the darker sides of ourselves."

Arnold wasn't looking at Lila now. He was turning his head and his body to slowly, one by one, make eye contact with everyone in Hillwood he had grown up with.

"I thought that returning would be the greatest feeling I've ever had, but," he paused when his gaze passed Helga's, "it's been the most disappointing and ugly experience. I should have kept Hillwood in my memory where it belonged, because the way it ended up has been just...such a let down."

He was looking down at Lila again, trying not to notice the glimmer of a destroyed look of anguish in Helga's frown.

"You should have just left and come to be with me instead of _this_. Maybe I could have helped that darkness inside you if I had seen it sooner; it's doesn't matter now I guess. You're not someone I recognize, or ever knew. Lila Sawyer was a fiction. Helga is right about one thing, you'll have only yourself to keep yourself company from here on. I'm done with whoever _you _are. You're not even sorry for what you did to everyone, to Helga, or to _me. _What if I had actually gone through with it? And _married_ you? Was your plan to just never tell me the truth? How could you make your _vows_ if they were based on a lie? They wouldn't have meant anything. You would have tricked me into marrying a lie. You nearly ruined my life."

Arnold rubbed his face with a hand, pausing for a second to gather his thoughts.

"The difference between us though, is that I don't turn my back on someone who has lost everything. Even if I am included in that tally, I don't forsake my vows."

Gerald felt a little tickle of joy in his chest. Arnold wasn't _all _gone.

"Hey Arnold! We want Helga!" Sid barked from across the street suddenly, apparently not having caught up to the current string of events. Arnold briefly looked away from Lila to give Sid a caustic and disapproving look.

"Sid, I reckon we misread the situation a bit," Stinky slowly interjected, sensing the danger the situation seemed to offer. "We ought to let Arnold finish before we go off making our demands."

Sid said nothing but hardened his jaw, and watched. Helga stood defiantly across the street from the crowd Sid had gathered, radiating deadly confidence. She all but invited them forward to taste their destruction with the icy blue glare of her eyes.

Arnold clearly was processing the finality of what happened at last. Gerald watched his oldest friend take on the leonine nobility of a merciful Caesar, placing his hand on Lila's downcast head as if he was laying hands on her, as if he was casting some miracle.

"You're going to stay in Hillwood," Arnold finally quietly commanded. "Here, among the faces of those you betrayed. Once your property is sold, you're going to use the money to pay back what you took from everyone. And I'll know if you do as you're told because you're going to live in the boarding house where my Grandpa can watch you. I'm not taking you captive, but you know you have nowhere else to go. I was all you had left, and that's gone now. If you decide to leave Hillwood against my advice, I can't be responsible for what happens to you anymore. But as long as you continue to stay, you'll at least go without suffering any physical punishment."

He looked at the crowd again, stopping on Helga. "No one will touch you. I made a promise to keep you safe. As long as you live under my roof, you'll at least be that."

Arnold was about to continue, but Lila's hand snatched onto his knee like a claw, and she hiccupped a sobbing plea.

"Don't," she started. "Don't you dare finish me off, Arnold. Put those hands on me again and nothing we shared mattered."

Arnold looked sad as he considered her words, and stooped to scoop her up into his arms in a princess carry. She looked so small to Gerald, he suddenly realized. The predatory ferocity she bared along with her fangs and claws of terror had fallen away. The final mask, perhaps, or at least the last layer before the real Lila was exposed. A broken, empty little thing, who had to be carried.

Arnold only answered her when he started to take her away.

"I know."

The gathered crowd watched in silence as Arnold carried her back up the stoop and into the building, disappearing from sight behind the door that clicked closed quietly.

* * *

Curly stood among the crowd, as silent as the others in reverence for Arnold's judgement. Even he had felt the gravitas of the sentencing, a deadly strike if he ever saw one. Life in disgrace and servitude was his literal worst nightmare. He secretly wished Lila had the strength to survive it; he knew he would not have the necessary resolve if it came to it.

"Arnold's different."

He turned to see who had said it. Harold. Curly didn't even notice how bad Harold smelled, the observation had been so astute. He stared at Harold for a moment, recognizing the elusive tail end of an opportunity that was so subtle only his mind could catch it.

Arnold had changed, certainly. He noticed it most of all when he icily turned away from Curly's hostility at the party the day before. The younger, optimistic Arnold from his childhood memory was unflappable in the face of even the harshest cruelty. He wasn't a perfect paragon of pure hearted behavior, but when the cards were down, he sought ways to reach out to bullies and villains to reform them.

And he had just brushed Curly off entirely. Something certainly unpleasant had finally turned Arnold into someone who could walk away from a cry for help. The previous night's embarrassing confession to Rhonda had confirmed to Curly that he was in a bad way and wanted reformation, even forgiveness. He didn't have any idea how to find it.

Until now. Curly knew what he needed to do to fix his life. And if he had anything to say about it, it could help Arnold as well. And just like any good plan by Thaddeus Curly Gammelthorpe, it was just crazy enough to work.

* * *

Helga stared at the closed door of her mother's flat, swirling numbness cutting through the tempest of emotions she was currently awash in. There are only so many cathartic experiences one can have in a two day period without losing some of the awe that accompanied the shock. Still, she was trembling with the after effects of her adrenaline rush when she noticed Phoebe pulling on her wrist.

"Helga! Helga we have to go! This doesn't look like it's over!"

Helga glanced at Phoebe's hand, and the smaller girl released her as if she suddenly realized she'd been grabbing a lion's tail. Helga seemed unimpressed with Phoebe's panic. She glanced over at Gerald, who until now she hadn't noticed, but who seemed to Helga the logical place to turn.

"Hey Hairboy, will you give a girl a break and help calm Pheebs down? She ain't gonna like what I'm about to do."

Gerald, for his part, didn't disappoint. He always was the calm, cool half of the couple. Helga liked him more and more these days, but especially now when he stepped up to her request with gusto.

"C'mon baby, Helga's got this. And we got her back. You an' me, we chased this wild goose to the bitter end. Least we deserve is the fireworks at the grand finale."

Helga couldn't actually help herself, she was smirking in delight at Gerald's choice of words. _Why __yes__, _she internally purred, _there __will__ be fireworks. The kind these dim witted yokels have never seen. _Helga lifted up her hands to her face, clenching her right fist into her other hand and generously cracking every joint in her fingers and knuckles, with the sort of slow threatening movements a big cat made before finishing off her prey.

"C'mon, Betsy," she growled, pushing the sleeve of her right arm up above the intimidating swell of her bicep. "It's time we got to work."

Sid and the others stood uneasily on the other end of the street, watching Helga move forward with the hunched lope of a predator towards them, clutching her arm menacingly. Half of their number immediately peeled off and scattered, wisely determining that it was best not to tangle with the looming Viking she-beast that slouched toward their gathered posse. Helga let out a deeply satisfied scoff, a honey-sweet sound that betrayed how much she was legitimately _enjoying _being feared again. She was big enough to admit to herself that it felt _great _to be a force of elemental fury, and given appropriate berth.

"S-stay where you are, Pataki," Sid warned, and a few of the gang seemed to bolster his threat with a display of solidarity. Helga snorted, unimpressed, and kept right on crunching the asphalt of the street under her baseball cleats. _These cretins didn't even give me a chance to get home and change_, she fumed, merely continuing her direct trajectory towards the crowd that dared menace _her_ of all people; this sorry lot of cowardly betrayers and profiteering Buccaneers! How dare they presume to chase _her _down as if she was some kind of victim to be pursued! Helga ground her teeth and set her jaw, visibly snarling when she stomped the last few strides to stand nose to nose with a very unsure, very small-seeming Sid.

"Listen here, _Bucko," _she snarled, catching Sid by the lapel of his smarmy leather jacket and twisting it into her fist against his chest. She never noticed how _small_ he actually was, until she was towering over him, hand nearly as big around as his arms. "There's _two _reasons I don't just pound you into this sidewalk and make a Sid-stencil like that Banksy idiot you're always prattling on about. _One, _I don't want to fuck up my hand on your thick skull, because I've got a date tonight and don't have time to spare to pick bone chips out of Ol Betsy for the next hour after the world-ending beating I would administer on you. I would pound you so hard they would name a new kind of trauma after me and put your name in every medical oddities and curiosity journal from here to Singapore. Your face would be so much tender burger meat that they'd have to rename them Sidburgers with Helga's special fist sauce."

Sid's face was blanched into the sickly bloodless expression the kind a man gets when his legs suddenly noticed that his bladder was emptying.

"_Two_, we're fucking adults and don't solve our differences with violence you stupid fucking piece of shit._"_

Helga released Sid and snorted angrily in his face, then made deeply penetrative eye contact with every remaining member of the crowd, which was mostly just their childhood friends from PS118 at this point in her monologue.

"I expect the kind of batshit crazy heel turn you all pulled from a gormless monster like _Lila_, but not from your sorry asses. How long have we known each other? Most of us were in _preschool _together, which is actually kind of insane if you think about it. I mean, we are all still _friends _and talk to each other; some of us even DATE and live together. Since larva we know each other, and this is how you act?"

Helga spat on the ground at Sid's feet.

"Today I got accused of being all of y'all's childhood bogeyman and chased through the alleys like a wild beast. I got hit with _rocks _you savages! I have A FAIR AND DELICATE COMPLEXION, you _assholes, _you can't hit me with ROCKS!"

Helga noticed she had begun to shrilly shriek, and so took a moment to merely grumble like a distant thunderhead, promising the sudden immediate outburst of destructive lightning. After a pause, she threw her hands up in the air.

"And you all chased me down to here to, what, _lynch_ me? Where's your torches and pitchforks, if I'm the proverbial monster here? Were _any _of you prepared to carry out this ramshackle vigilante mission to _Get Helga_? Or were you all just stupidly pulled into the maelstrom of Sid's half-cocked demagoguery and joined along for the ride? My money's on the latter, though I bet you all _thought _it felt like the former. Well, what do you have to say for yourselves now?!"

Helga kept her fury in check for what felt like the trillionth time today, every instinct in her goddess heart screaming for her to grab a foreign object and start bashing some skulls. The awe-inspiring effect of her barely restrained fury seemed to have a pacifying effect on the crowd, most notably Sid, who had a pained frown on his face.

"We're sorry, Helga," Eugene chirped up, deep remorse pulled into the ginger lines of his face, polka-dotted with freckles. Helga turned slightly to see him crossing the street to join the crowd. Even though he had been one of the ones that had listened to her, believed her story, and helped her escape this very same rabid vigilante crowd, he was still magnanimous enough to get the process started for the rest of them.

"Yeah, I don't rightly know what in tarnation came over me," Stinky drawled, looking sheepish and embarrassed for his part in the blood hunt. She looked down at Sid, who was hesitating, but as the apologies started to wash in from everyone behind him, the short little punk finally rolled his shoulders and spoke.

"Yeah, guess I fucked it up pretty bad this time. You know how much dirt Lila had on me? I panicked. But you are right about one thing, there wasn't any way this could end well. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sorry. I owe you a big one for this fuckup, Helga."

Helga snorted with a small measure of satisfaction. _Sid_ owing her a big one was something she could be fine with. She thrust her hand out and sighed with exasperation.

"Fine, you owe me one big fat fucking favor to call in at a time of my choosing, and I forgive your dumbshit mob stunt, and we just go back to normal. _Capiche?"_

Everyone in the crowd released a tense breath when Sid grabbed Helga's hand firmly and smirked. "Capiche."

_There, __that__ problem is handled, now for the harpy in that house with my man,_ Helga started to turn back towards the house.

"Just a minute though," Sid interjected. "What's gonna happen next? Is Arnold really gonna just take Lila to his old place like that's that?"

Helga shrugged, arms up to the sky while she stormed across the street and up the stairs of the small stoop.

"You got me, Sid, but I aim to find out."

* * *

Lila crossed her arms over her lap passively when Arnold laid her carefully on the couch, eyes downcast and expression mutely blank. Arnold stood in front of her, unmoving after gently laying her to rest. He searched the blank, flat expense of her forehead, searching for some wrinkle or hint of emotion. Something he could identify as _human._

Lila just stared down at his knees, lips a plump line of silence on her current mask of defeat.

Arnold felt the child in him that loved Lila so passionately wailing in despair and disbelief, even as the betrayed adult in him felt sick with passionate outrage. Lila had been such an enormous, important figure in his life. His first girlfriend. Not his first unrequited crush, but perhaps his strongest. Eventually, one of his best friends, a confidant. Lila was so much to him, and it had all been a lie. Arnold didn't want to believe it had all been a lie, but the truth came from her very own lips.

He was shattered. What use did he have for love now if it did this? If it ruined everything?

Exhausted, simply from being, Arnold moved over and fell back onto the couch next to Lila, his head rolling back to lean on the floral-print cushions. He squeezed his eyes shut, covering his face with a hand, struggling with the storm of emotion that was shredding his insides like a sandstorm pelting his tender guts with microscopic shards of glass.

Emotion swelled his throat shut, and he heard himself start to sob.

Lila's head lifted and she turned to look at him, Arnold noticed in the periphery of his blurred, tear-choked vision. He couldn't really make out what she looked like, with his eyes squinted nearly closed and drowned in Sorrow's gifted waters.

She didn't speak, but he felt her hand touch his shoulder, calmly, gently. Arnold felt his chest buckle and choke with a spasm of agonized crying, the contact like being stuck with a block of ice and burned with a branding iron all at once. It was _horrible_ to be touched by her, it made his stomach flip and churn and it made his nausea rush up to the back of his throat. And yet, he hated himself, because he so desperately wanted her to comfort him in his devastation, he weakly, submissively fell into the touch.

Arnold folded over, crying as he went, and fell with his face in Lila's partially deadened lap.

He spent a minute or so simply emptying his vessel of remorse in this way, clasping his hands over his face in prideful shame while he filled the cracks between his fingers with bitter tears, the wail of the dead hauntingly escaping him between deeply heaved breaths of panic. Lila stroked the back of his head, fingers slithering between wild locks of leonine blonde hair, disgusting him with how _good_ it felt to have her kindness when he ought to be hating her.

She even hummed, gently, a fond tune she used to hum him on long phone calls in the middle of the night in Argentina when the years of Helga's silence had finally gotten to him. The choice stung him acutely, and the sheer _gall_ of her to pay him insult even while she tenderly stroked his head in patient forgiving gentleness just knocked Arnold even further off his kilter.

Arnold pushed off her lap, anger creasing his handsome features, tears ugly in their seat of the lines of his face. Hateful crying was not a good look for Arnold.

"How could you _do_ this, Lila?" he hoarsely demanded.

"Do you want the real answer, or do you want me to make you feel ever so much better?" Lila's neutral expression was tinted with the slightest bit of amused pity, it occurred to Arnold.

"_Is _there a real answer?", anger shook in Arnold's reply.

"Oh truth is ever so much relative, I'm afraid, Arnold my dear," she chided, a patronizing smile on her pretty lips. "But in this case I have a real answer for you, or an answer that you will like so ever so much you will _want _it to be real, and maybe even come to believe some day. The mind is a fascinating con artist, Arnold, better than I could ever hope to be."

Arnold shook his head, just not sure how he could have ever come to trust this...this _demon_ sitting next to him.

"You probably compare me to some sort of monster or demon in your thoughts," she mused, looking back down at her lap. Arnold nearly choked, it was like she was reading his mind. "And I'm not reading your mind," she chuckled, freaking the emotionally distraught Arnold out further, "you're just the easiest to read. Plus, it makes sense. I did some ever so _awful _things. Told some ever so _terrible _lies."

Arnold was ready to leave. She stopped him with her green eyes, steadily looking deep into him.

"But the truth is pretty boring, and _human, _and it won't make you feel better. It will ruin things with Helga ever so much, I think. It will haunt you. Normally, that would be _ever _so fine with me. But the Queen is captured; your prisoner will merrily accept your demands, and thank you for her comfortable cell. If you demand the truth, I'll smile while I tell you something that will hurt you. But I prefer to tell you one last little tiny white lie, and give you something you won't get otherwise."

"What is that," Arnold asked breathlessly, somehow tugged under her rhetorical spell so effortlessly. _How does she do that? _he wondered, amazed at her skill.

"Closure." She shrugged with a wan smile, hands folding again in her lap. "The ability to move on with a clean conscience. Something precious, I dare say, considering your imminent date with Helga. You don't want the details hanging over your head. It might be a ridiculous thing to say, but trust me when I say you want me to lie one last time."

Arnold was struck with how empty and cynical she was. How boldly she determined that she knew best for him, even totally exposed and defeated as she was. Lila Sawyer - whoever that was - remained true to herself at last, in that she hadn't stopped working him. Arnold didn't think she could.

"There's a third option," Arnold quietly murmured.

"Hm? Mystery door number three? I'm ever so curious, Arnold, what is your simple, beautiful mind thinking, my darling?"

Her sweet nothings made his stomach churn.

"I can just stand up and walk out, and deny you this last little...manipulation. I can quit your game, and go outside, and never come back into your life again."

The stern strength of his declaration stood like stone between the two former lovers. Lila's face returned to a bored-looking mute mask, her gaze flitting over his shoulder and focusing elsewhere.

"Suit yourself," she quietly clucked. "Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. Enjoy your date."

Arnold looked across the couch at her, tried to land eye contact while she stared past him. Lila was gone. _His _Lila maybe never existed. Maybe she did in some way. Did he want to know? Was it important to him that he know the truth?

Arnold realized then, that he had a bad history of leaving behind girls and regret, and things left unanswered. He imagined the havoc a left-behind-Lila could wreck on his heart, and knew there was no place for it. Answers were required.

He couldn't afford another decade of "what if?"

Arnold steadied himself with a deep breath, wiping his face clean with his sleeves. There was little dignity in the act, but he didn't have Lila's immaculate mask. He was guileless, and could not help but openly display the ugly truth of her hurt in his face. Or his tears.

"No, you are right about one thing. Being ignorant is just running off again. I choose fight."

Lila turned to regard him, her eyes impassively matching his gaze. "So which is it?"

"I want truth and beauty."

Lila sneered. "_Beauty. _The truth is ugly. That's what I tried to shield you from for so many years, stupid boy. But my efforts failed. I failed."

"Truth _is _beauty, Lila," he asserted, _needing _ to believe those words more than he meant them. Lila seemed to see the desperation in him, and relaxed her composure.

"Truth it is."

* * *

"The ever so sad fact of the matter is that Lila Sawyer, as you knew her, never existed. She is a fabrication, a ghostly image I conjured up in spite of myself, seeking some new absolution for a youth misspent in sin. I molded her speech carefully, full of _Ever So_ and sweetness, a lilt and a song to carry the sweetest lie I ever told. I built her sense of humor, laugh by laugh, and let my creation bubble free when the good times came. I avoided deepening my bonds; with you most ardently and passionately like-liking me, I had no choice but to retract. The truth is, I thought you were too simple, and too sweet. A horrible match for a mask wearer like myself. What if you got close enough to notice the illusion? I was young and inexperienced at mask-wearing those days, and unsure of the fit I had moulded to my face. I couldn't be too careful, and a young Arnold in _like-like _with me was too dangerous to allow.

"I can see by the frown on your handsome face you think this is some kind of abhorrent, monstrous confession. Dear Arnold, _everyone _wears masks. Even Helga. Even _you. _What about the Arnold that Helga met before he told her he was _engaged _to Lila Sawyer? That was quite a mask until Helga's fist shattered it. What about the mask Helga wore those ten years of silence? Don't you know, my ever so stupid love, how badly she was shrieking out to you behind it? How _much_ she said behind her mask of silence?

"I simply made mine on purpose.

"And I wore it well. It became comfortable after a time. And maybe, if I am honest, the line between the mask wearer and mask became to minute as to be virtually invisible. But even something that is _almost _zero isn't quite zero. I could remove the mask at will, and it never became my true face.

"The mask of Fuzzy Slippers was another false face I wore. Helga has it right, that ever so clever girl, I have face after face I wear that any given person might encounter. I heard about a Japanese concept about this, that basically a person has three faces they wear in life. The face your family knows is the most intimate, followed by the face friends can see, and lastly the face strangers know. It's similar except that I just have more layers of separation than most people. There's more discrete partitions in my world than family, friends, and strangers. My enemies see a different mask, my victims yet another, my lovers a private mask I've worn only once, and so on. Fuzzy Slippers was a bit more of an alter ego, but you can really just consider it a mask I wore for _myself._

"I hate myself.

"Fuzzy Slippers is the mask I made to wear instead of having to look at the real Lila Sawyer anymore.

"It didn't matter if the mask was cruel and dangerous and sought to damage and destroy our friends' reputation, that was the cost of the mask. I paid it, eagerly emptying my purse into the tollman's expectant sack. Nothing less could distract the awful exposed nerve of the real me.

"I'm not sorry for Fuzzy Slippers. She's who got me here alive in the war against myself.

"Do you want to know the one time I allowed the real Lila Sawyer to come out since you met me, totally out, without restraint? I'll tell you how cowardly I am, and I'll empty your heart of affection of me and replace it with guilt. You chose fight. You chose truth and beauty.

"Your price is your happiness with Helga.

"As I saw your broken bleeding body resting with absolute cold stillness against the rocks that rose like teeth to clash against a waterfall you were too unlucky to safely climb, I let her slip out. Rightly, that should be where you died.

"If Lila Sawyer hadn't come out, you'd be dead.

"She's the only one who has rights to sacrifice this vessel, this broken body I would have married you with and allowed you to pleasure yourself with every night if you'd wanted. She's the only one who could decide to scatter the protective measures aside and throw herself down the waterfall with frightened abandon.

"So I see your body, see the blood, and there's ever so much. I could have walked away, you know? Or ran for help knowing it was in vain. Anything but risk my life. I'm a coward remember? I can't even risk the very sight of my real personality out of fear.

"But death stares at me and says '_I will kill you if you try to save him,"_ and I laughed as Lila Sawyer Unmasked and careened down the waterfall and shouted, '_Come, Death!'_

"I saved you, somehow. I had extra pitons and the temporary invincible strength of someone who was being _human_ for the first time since their mother died. I was letting you in my heart and the wretched thing would soon stop beating for allowing you entry.

"The only reason I lived was the random chance of a change of wind. A butterfly flapped its wings in India and so I lived. I should be dead. Lila Sawyer certainly is. She died when she hauled you up over the rim safely, muscles screaming in a way I _pray_ I will be able to feel again someday. She died when she looked at your unconscious face, white with shock, and fell back over the edge from the slick mud, and watched her hand release the climbing rope. She died when she hit the first precipice that took my legs, too short of a fall for the safety line to catch me. She died when the rescuers came, and saved _me _without effort.

"Lila Sawyer, may she rest in peace, died saving the only person she loved. And she left _me _in her place in these broken limbs and messy heart and pile of masks. I would not let you escape. You _had _to be mine. It was not only in your best interest, it was _my right. _My _weregild._

"Fuzzy Slippers became the real Lila Sawyer. Everything else was the lie."

* * *

Lila broke eye contact with Arnold at last, looking over his shoulder at Helga who had come into the house and the room sometime in he middle of Lila's speech.

Arnold didn't notice the fleeting change, because Lila slapped her gaze back onto his.

"That's why, Arnold," she continued, knowing her audience was there to secure its victory, and thus knowing she had nothing to lose, "you won't end up with Helga in the end. The guilt, that terrible monster inside you, it will _eat _you with unending appetite. You will try loving her, maybe, you might even date her for a time if you are especially stupid, and hate living. That she beat me is ever so true. It was my total loss. But _your heart was not the prize_. It wasn't hers or mine to begin with. Your heart belongs to this world, to goodness itself. And you can try ever so hard to forget this guilt and live without my sacrifice in your shadow, and part of me _truly _wishes you could be free of me forever, but you won't. And anyway, you _doubted _Helga. You believed _me. _Even without the guilt your future with her was decided the instant that choice was made."

Arnold was silent up until this exact point.

"Shut up about Helga, _SHUT UP ABOUT HELGA!" _he roared. "Helga has _nothing _to do with your betrayal, or the disgusting way you treated our friends!"

Lila jumped a little, surprised at the sudden force of Arnold's shout. He wasn't one to yell usually, it caught her off guard. He seemed ready to burst. Lila glanced at Helga briefly, recognized the same surprise on her face.

"And how DARE you try to _guilt_ me for saving my life! You have no right to put me in that position, to hamstring me like that!"

"I told you the truth had a price," Lila almost laughed in her mocking reply, perhaps amused at the shock in his reaction. She'd warned him, after all.

"That's _not_ a price. That's a death sentence." Arnold was rising to stand, his hands shaking.

"If life guilt-ridden by your life-debt to the traditional wretch you cast out to catch her death in the snow means you will _die,_ then I suppose you should prepare to greet death." Lila's tone was patronizing, cold. She measured the weight of every word as she laid them out.

She was laying it on thick, she knew, but the effect it had on Arnold was exactly what she wanted. She watched Helga twitch in fury in her place far back in the entryway of the house, a private smirking smile almost daring her to interrupt.

However, she noticed that Arnold had calmed suddenly, his hands fists at his sides.

"I don't owe _you._ You didn't save me. Lila Sawyer did."

"Arnold I'm ever so sure I don't know what you are trying to imply. Lila Sawyer sits before you." She batted her eyelashes at him prettily, mockingly.

"No, you said so yourself. Lila Sawyer died when she saved Arnold Shortman. She sacrificed herself and paid the ultimate price. She left _Fuzzy Slippers_ in her wake. _That's_ all I see sitting before me. An empty husk where Lila Sawyer used to be, and the pile of masks she wore heaped up in her place."

"Very clever, Arnold. Maybe you'll be able to convince yourself of that in time. You know the truth now, anyhow. And my point remains: it's over for you and Helga. It never had a chance." She checked her fingernails, emotionally empty now, discarded the last bits of affection she had for the boy who broke her heart in a nasty act of casual cruelty.

"I know," Arnold sighed. Lila looked up, shocked. She saw Helga standing there, silent, eyes wide and locked on Arnold.

"I know, and I guess I knew for awhile. I didn't trust her, you were right. I was sitting in this house trying to figure out how I could _forgive _her, how I could maybe act like it never _happened_ or I didn't know. I was wondering if I could look into her lying face for the rest of my life. I knew I couldn't do it. I knew I wasn't...strong enough for her."

Lila watched with her jaw open in a shocked smile as Arnold slowly sank to the couch again and put his head in his hands. She could hardly believe the dramatic _irony._ She lost the battle when too much had been overhead because of Helga. And now Helga would lose the _war_ when she overheard too much because of Lila! It was almost too rich!

Lila couldn't help it. She laughed.

A rich, bubbly laugh, velvet and silk, tinted with all the malice and schadenfreude that delighted her at the utter _desolation_ Arnold's words would have on Helga. Arnold snapped his face up to look at her, shock and disbelief on his face. He saw where Lila was gawking, now cackling with delight, and whipped his head around.

Nothing. Nobody there.

Lila had watched Helga quietly, mutely turn from the scene in front of her. She knew Helga had heard the first delighted notes of her laughter before she silently closed the front door. Lila knew Helga had heard the cackling start when her white ponytails bobbed down out of view from the front door window as she escaped down the stoop.

Lila knew the war was won, and Arnold would find out the _hard_ way.

"What the fuck is so funny, Lila?" Arnold spat in a disgusted tone.

"Oh, oh dear, I'm ever so sorry. I...I didn't expect you to agree with me! It just, it surprised me so much! I was sure you'd hate me so much forever and ever, and you'd never admit a single thing I ever said was right again." She wiped the tears of humor from the corners of her eyes.

"Lila, we're done," he said simply. "I'm done being your fiance, I'm done being your friend. I'm done _knowing_ you. You'll live under my roof. There's your weregild. You'll eat my grandmother's teriyaki turkey thanksgiving dinners. You'll endure my grandfather's hyperactive bowels. You'll deal with _Mr Kokoshka,_ and that's punishment enough for a lifetime. But I won't see you there. I won't acknowledge you as anything but a tenant I have to modify the boarding house to be wheelchair accessible for. Don't call, don't write. Don't ask about me. And leave Helga alone."

"Oh you don't have to worry about me and her, Arnold. That fight is _over._" She could barely contain her cheshire grin. Total victory was _so sweet _when it was this pyrrhic.

"Good. I'm going to go tell Miriam to help you get ready to move. I expect your things will get moved pretty quickly. You're done with harassing the Patakis to get at Helga.

That stung. Lila tried not to show it, but she had to admit, even if she had tried to get close to the Patakis primarily as a vessel to antagonize Helga, she had grown legitimately fond of them.

"When I leave, I'm going to go shower, and wash this and you out of my life forever. Then I'm going to put on a brave face, smile real big, and go have a date with Helga. The one she _deserves_. The one I promised her. Got it?"

"I'm ever so sure that you'll do exactly that, Arnold." Lila replied with a cheery tune in her voice.

Arnold couldn't figure this creature out, Lila could tell. He stared down at her with a confused look on his face, like he just expected her to _apologize_ and start sobbing her eyes out and beg for forgiveness. Lila was not about to debase herself like that, not when she'd really _won._

Arnold made a disgusted sound, shook his head, and stalked up the stairs out of the room.

"Goodbye, Lila Sawyer."

_Goodbye, Arnold Shortman,_ Lila thought, and closed her eyes with a smile.

Finally, she was done.

Lila Sawyer folded her hands in a relaxed position in her lap, breathing steady as she recalled every detail of Helga's destroyed face with precise attention to detail. It would be the best, last memory she had of her time as Lila Sawyer for the rest of her life. She could reply the memory back again and again with nearly perfect recall. She loved the moment when she could see Helga's heart rip in half etched across her features the most.

Lila Sawyer was finally herself again, alone, and no one could hurt her loveless heart again.

* * *

A/N Part Deux: Don't hate me if it's another nine months before I update again.


	17. Chapter 17 - There is No Kindness

A/N: I hope you all enjoyed Lila's role in my story. When I started writing this I never actually intended to include her. A series of whims and random inspirations fueled her inclusion, and eventually, she became the dramatic foil that kept the story moving. I was always conscious of her existence as a tacked-on nemesis to Helga, however, and have been writing steadily towards her exit.

I wish Lila Sawyer nothing but the best. I treated her far more poorly than I ever intended. Craig Bartlett surely never intended her to be such a sinister villain!

She's done her part, now. This has always been a Helga and Arnold story, and now that she has done the hard work of airing out their closets, we can return to the core of the tale.

Let's all thank Lila in our hearts as we wish her the ultimate punishment for her twisted actions, and continue onwards in this sad tale of past love struggling to survive the present and make a future.

I may have exaggerated in two ways: 1) the time I would be away before an update. 2) how close we are to the end. I realized today I am not quite done jerking you around. Expect another 3 or so chapters after this one before the final chapter and then the epilogue. Sorry, not sorry.

Also, this chapter is rated pretty M. Be warned, there's some _adult situations_ involving _consenting adults_ to come.

On with the show!

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 17, There is No Kindness; There's a Different Kind of Crime

"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing." ― Sylvia Plath

* * *

Phoebe Hyerdhal knew turmoil.

Over the years she had been Helga Pataki's best friend, the studious, thoughtful young woman had run through the gamut of disasters and tragedies, and been part of and foiled far too many plots and schemes of sinister design. Fuzzy Slippers had been the preoccupation of her teenage mind for so long, she'd begun to understand and even adopt the various logical methods her once unknown foe used to navigate this unruly life. Most of the tools she had at her disposal prepared her for moments like these.

She still found herself rapidly trying to figure out what in the world was going on inside that closed house with Helga, Arnold, and Lila inside.

Phoebe loved her best friend. Truly _loved_ her, in a profound way that sometimes shocked even her. Helga was very much a piece of her very body, and she was fiercely protective over her as if she was a lioness and Helga was her cub. She wanted with every fiber of herself to be with her right now, in her triumph or her trouble. But she knew that beyond the threshold of the door was a world that didn't belong to her. It was a particular universe only Helga, Arnold, and Lila occupied. She orbited it, and was keenly aware of her gravitational attraction to the triangle, but, she was not part of it.

So she held her breath and wished she had some nasty compulsive habit to satisfy while she spent these agonizing minutes waiting.

Finally, it happened. The door cracked open, slowly and quietly. _That's a bad sign_, Phoebe immediately recognized. _No spirit, no energy. Something happened._

Helga bounced down the stoop, into the expectant, forgotten crowd. The door to the private universe closed behind her. Outside, in this tumult, there was only _mess_ and _disaster. _Her friends were crowded around in an instant, expectant demands for the results flying from each of their mouths as fast as they could get the words out.

"What happened, Helga?" Rhonda demanded of her. Helga looked up at her, eyes staring right past her. Rhonda recoiled at the haunted, _empty _glare in Helga's tired expression.

"Nothing that any of you need to worry about. We're done here." Helga's tone was uncharacteristically curt. It worried Phoebe _intensely._

"Just a minute, what does that mean," Gerald started to interject, but he stopped when he felt Phoebe's small hand touch his. He looked down at his side to see the concern on his girlfriend's face, understanding that _something went wrong._

"It means it is none of our business what happens to her anymore," Helga spat. "Criminy with the Spanish Inquisition here! Some bullshit happened, and it has _nothing_ to do with you! So scram! Get out of my face! _MOVE!" _A familiar light in Helga was seemingly lit when she was pressed.

Phoebe slipped up next to Helga, instinctively understanding that she needed to help. Here, she could be the friend Helga needed from time to time. That pillar of support that could rise up unbidden, from places Helga never expected but was always glad to have.

"I think it is exceptionally fair to say that we could all use some time to _digest_ the events of today in a sober, responsible manner. It is therefore my recommendation that we disperse with all speed to our respective safe spaces, and _calm down._ One of our oldest friends was revealed to be out ultimate betrayer today. Gerald and myself, particularly, could use the time to come to terms that one of our best friends was leading the two of us along, hook, line, and sinker. There's wounds to tend to, both literal and figurative, so let us make the wise decision and regroup once we have given the events of today their deserved gravity and consideration over a healthy night's recuperation."

The crowd turned as a single unit to Gerald, expectantly.

"She means we gotta sleep on it, _sheesh_, ain't any of y'all _read? _Pick up a thesaurus, damn."

Phoebe glowed with pride at Gerald's annoyance at the crowd so stubbornly refusing to hear her. Sometimes her boyfriend did _just _the right things without ever needing to be told so. She loved him _especially _much those times.

Some shoving indicated that Helga had actually escaped the scene. She cleared the crowd with a barrage of cursing and rough pushing, finally walking quickly out of the crowded scene with the weight of absolute exhaustion crushing her every step away. Phoebe started after her, but it was Brainy that stopped her.

"No," he said, a hand up to firmly block her way. Phoebe was once again surprised by how much he communicated with so few words.

Helga needed to be alone, definitely so. The crowd began to disperse, with some talking of hanging out in groups and others openly longing for a lonely shower and an evening of Netflix bingeing, but more or less settling in their own routines of normal, everyday life. Somehow, Phoebe knew that this was not nearly over for them. They needed _catharsis_, somehow.

Because that was how her mind worked, Phoebe was already making the plans for how to give it to them.

"Babe," Phoebe finally heard Gerald interrupt her, as she stared off at Helga's back growing more distant down the block.

"Hm?"

"I've been calling you for damn near a minute, you okay?"

"Hm, I think so. As well as I can be, given the circumstances of today's events. I could use a drink, and a long hot bath. _Oh _that sounds lovely, now that I say it."

Gerald nudged her. "A bath? Sounds nice. Where they got a bathtub big enough for both of us? Maybe the _Hilton_ downtown, but man those _prices!"_

Phoebe took a second to understand his meaning, and then bubbled in a delighted peak of laughter. "Gerald you _charmer_, I meant by myself. I love you, darling, but there's no way I will share a bath with you."

"HOLD up," Gerald held up a hand with a smile. "First of all I am gonna return to your dumbass bath statement in a minute. But did I just hear my girl say she loves me? You love me?"

Phoebe blinked with the terrible realization she _had never said so_, but that she did, in fact, love Gerald. The awkwardness of how this information came to light caused the petite girl to flush deeply in her pale cheeks. "Y-yes, I thought you knew," she awkwardly admitted.

"Naw, I mean, yeah, but, you _said so_. Damn! Wow. Hold on I gotta get my face to stop smiling to reply proper."

Phoebe became profoundly aware of all the remaining faces turned towards them in curiosity, watching with intent another Hillwood couple confess itself directly in front of them again. Phoebe twitched and fidgeted in anticipation, a warm squirming feeling in her lower abdomen rising at the awkward moment of love's first confession.

"I love you too, Phoebe," Gerald finally laughed. "Now c'mon let's go get somethin' to eat. I'm _starved._"

Phoebe figured she could begin the arduous task of plotting the Hillwood cathartic process _after _she had paid her boyfriend in gratitude for loving her so openly. The flutter in her belly demanded attention, and she longed to satisfy that call.

"_Anywhere_," she breathlessly confessed. "I'll go anywhere with you, Gerald."

His broad, bright smile on that handsomely toned face simply made her knees jelly every time. Even now, at what was effectively Ground Zero. It was a quality he had that she hoped would never diminish. He was her King in those moments.

"Good to hear, baby," he smirked. "You wanna wait to see if my man comes out? Maybe he can join us, I'd hate to leave my boy alone after all this."

"A fine notion, although I remain hesitant to intrude in this tender aftermath. Brian interceded on Helga's behalf, it leads me to believe we should allow Arnold the same sort of healing solitude that she is getting."

"Yeah you are probably right, but I wanna wait on him just the same. Gonna ask the man myself. Helga does most of her talking with the shit she pulls, but my Arnold will probably wanna say his piece."

Phoebe nodded at the wisdom of his assessment, lowering to sit on a step of the stoop. It occurred to her how massive these last 48 hours had seemed. So much had _happened_, crammed into such a short time, it was practically unreal. Exhaustion the type she had only ever theorized to be possible was beginning to creak into her joints and ache in her bones. A moment's respite was enough to remind her that she needed to _recover._

_If I'm this bad off, imagine poor Helga, _she mused. She was surely ready to simply drop like a stone from the terrible exhaustion of it all. Finally defeating a lifelong nemesis, fleeing an angry lynch mob, and spending a day catching Arnold's toughest pitches, Helga was surely ragged.

Phoebe once again wished she had a bad habit to nurture while she waited for Arnold to emerge, _sure _that Helga needed some help.

She just didn't know what kind.

* * *

_He doesn't love you._

It was easy enough to understand. Afterall the years, abuses, and dirty secrets, the good hearted Arnold had given it a try and just didn't feel the same as she did.

_Hey, at least he was nice enough to try._

The sting wasn't nearly as painful as she had always imagined it finally would be. It didn't feel like anything, actually, it was more like the totally unfamiliar sensation of a total _lack _of something. Helga felt like disappointment and despair ought to be crushing her to death, squeezing her heart shut, and emptying her veins out all over the concrete of Hillwood. But Helga felt a sort of absolutely numb, logical silence in her soul, a mysteriously clean _nothing_ that made her feel quite..._calm._

How different this felt from the disastrous manic dissociation from the night before. Where that was a mad, tangled riot of confusion, blinding pain, and what can only be described as a _lightning _of the mind, this was a lead, cold feeling of being absolutely within the boundaries of herself, and knowing the entire empty expanse - every wrinkle, every bruise.

Helga felt the ground pushing back up onto her feet, rather than the fall of footsteps carrying her weight. It was a fascinating new sensation, quite like she was only being held in place by the kiss of the earth on her baseball sneakers, and if that contact lapsed for too long, she and her empty cold shell would just lift off the ground and float away.

It was a nice thought, the idea of simply going away. _Am I going away now? _She wondered, unsure if she _had _any idea where she was going. Home maybe? A shower would be nice. She could cry in a shower, if she needed to cry.

_Are there any tears left in me for Arnold Shortman?_ She wondered. So many tears had squeezed out of her, distilled by perfect longing and teenage despair, refined into absolute suffering that burned her eyes and cheeks, and left her a hot swollen red mess. She didn't feel much like crying, actually. She realized, she felt like _laughing._

"It's all so _funny_," she heard herself begun to talk as she neared the apartment she shared with Brainy. "I spend my whole life pining after the stupid football headed idiot from a distance, and miserable for it. I finally confess my stupid feelings and the punchline is that he _tries _to love me back and _can't. _Hahaha!"

Laughter the color of dessert wine and the scent of steel escaped her, carried in the wind of her lungs that was as stale as old furnace smoke.

"And Lila's done, finished, _buried _in her defeat, but it didn't matter in the end because _he believed her first! _Of course Helga could have done all those things, she's _Helga! _Awful, terrible, mean-spirited, scheming Helga. Always a bully, Helga. A stupid, smart-mouthed, hard-hearted fear monger that ruled the schoolyard with a glare and a snarl. That's me!

"And Lila was perfect and paralyzed and pretty and _of course _he believed her! What a simple conclusion, perfectly logical! I can't even complain he came to it! It's what anyone would think!"

Helga started up the steps to her apartment door, hand automatically fishing her keys free as she had the nicest conversation with herself about the end of the world.

"I can't even be _mad _at the sweet stupid kid because he did his best, bless him, he kissed me and fucked me and tried his best to care. Sweet, simple boy. That's what I _wanted. _That's what I _expected. _Everything went exactly to plan and I tricked him just _enough _to get the one night I wanted. Everything worked out great!"

She stepped into the cleaned apartment, Brian and Phoebe's hard work evident. She dropped her keys on the kitchen table as she automatically proceeded to her room and the sole bathroom, peeling off her shirt as she talked.

"And he's committed to one last date with me, that stupid lovely idiot, what a _boon_. I'm thankful," she grunted as she turned the hot water of her shower on, the quickly steaming water screaming forth as it was summoned. "I have so much to be thankful for!"

Helga stepped out of her dirt-caked shorts, then the sweat-soaked panties, and lumbered into the blissfully razor-like heat of the shower on full blast. She let the outrageous heat of the water pelt her forehead and silver-white bangs, standing dully with her bra still on for a few full minutes before an arm mechanically swung to her back and popped it free. She shrugged it off and let it fall to the tub in the collecting pool of water at her feet, sweat and red dirt tinting the tub as it soaked from her undergarment.

Realizing she probably didn't want to ruin one of her bras, she grumbled and stooped down, flicking it still-soaked out of the shower in the general direction of the sink and counter, aiming as best she could haphazardly manage. How much time had passed in her solitary walk back to her apartment? Half an hour or so? Time seemed like a distant, pesky resource that simply trickled away from her unceasingly, while she only dimly perceived its steady flight away from her.

Somewhere in the space of wondering about the time, she'd started to wash herself. It was rote muscle memory, just mechanical maintenance of the husk she inhabited, an obligation of ritual. She felt nothing, even as the heat of the shower steamed her fair skin pink and red. She felt _nothing_ except the massive yawning gulf inside her that she'd been psychically staring at since she left that stoop.

"I guess I've got to make this date count," she finally spoke to herself again, staring at the foaming accumulation of soap and red dirt washing against her feet under the cascade of the shower's waters. "There won't be a repeat. This, and last night, are the two things Arnold's giving to me. I guess as his parting gift, that softy. What a sentimental boob. What a...what a _fool._"

She became aware that at some point in her speech, she'd begun to finally shed the last tears she had for Arnold Shortman.

"What a stupid, lovable fool," she whispered against the grasping lump of emotion in her throat. Her fists balled, then lowered to her sides as she began to slowly crouch. The ground was pushing up against her more and more, clasping itself to her with that precious contact. She lay as much as her lanky, muscled form would allow, reclining in the tub, the coursing stream of steaming water spraying her bare breasts and belly. She knew she needed to let the ground push her up as much as possible, to keep her weight buoyed with the insistence of its reach up, and up. She needed that press from below so she didn't fly apart, suddenly bereft of any substance inside and terribly, terribly light.

Helga Pataki lay in her bath tub, shower pounding endlessly, and finished all the crying she'd ever do again for the boy she loved but couldn't love her, tear by tear, sob by sob. Only once did the volume of her mourning wail reach past the insistent hiss of the shower head, so private were the last moments of her dirge.

The emptying of Helga's heart was a surprisingly gentle gesture, in the end.

* * *

Arnold closed the front door of the Pataki household with all the business of Lila firmly sorted and behind him, literally shutting the door on that mess of his life once and for all. Everything would sort itself out, in the end.

Miriam Pataki was surprisingly alert, sober, and attentive when Arnold very firmly told her what was going to happen. She seemed to agree, adding her own ideas about the whole situation whenever she could. Arnold quite patiently had also offered _her_ a place to stay at the boarding house should anything happen to her. The gesture clearly had touched her, though Olga assured him it would never be necessary.

Regardless, Arnold had left without another word to Lila. The last image he had of her was her sitting with a wan smile on her face, eyes closed, in the solitude of the living room he left her in.

_It's over. _Arnold breathed in a heavy sigh, expecting the crowd but surprised to see…nobody.

Almost nobody.

Gerald leaned his head back so he could see Arnold from his spot sitting on the stoop steps facing away from the door.

"Finally done?"

Arnold nodded and went to sit next to him. The two of them sat in thoughtful silence, Arnold silently thankful he had such a considerate best friend to stick around. Really, to stay by him after all these years was pretty remarkable. He said so.

"Gerald, thanks for sticking by me for so long. I know I've been a handful lately. Glad to know I got someone in my corner."

Gerald shrugged and smiled for his friend. "Arnold my man, you're the only sidekick I got. Gotta make sure you don't stay in trouble for too long, man."

Arnold cracked a smile, just tickled enough at the thought that he was Gerald's sidekick. Really, that was probably _true_, he realized with an amused thought. Of the two of them, Gerald had his shit _way_ more put together. Easily, he was the cool frontman of the group, and Arnold was just the messy busybody always stirring trouble. He liked the thought. It made him feel less like he was always the cause of every problem.

Every orphan blames themselves for being alone.

Gerald was apparently waiting for the right time to say _something_, Arnold could tell by the way he kept licking his lips like he was about to start a big speech. It was an old habit from when they were kids. Even all grown up, Arnold still saw that snot-nosed lanky braggart from his childhood in his best friend.

"Don't keep me waiting, Gerald, I still got a date to get cleaned up for. Say whatever it is on your mind. I'm your best friend."

"I guess why I hesitate is 'cause I don't know if that will still be true after all I gotta say," Gerald chuckled. "Sounds silly when I say that shit out loud."

"That _is _silly. We're basically brothers man. Almost _were _if your sister had her way that one time."

Gerald laughed at the memory of when his kid sister had crushed on Arnold hard.

"Yeah, I suppose you're right on. I just gotta bust your chops a bit man. You mind if I'm honest?"

Arnold smiled and shook his head. "I could use some more honesty in my life, Gerald. By all means."

"Aiight man just know I'm gonna give you a rough time 'cause you need someone to knock some sense into you. Bad."

"Knock away."

Gerald went quiet, seeming to compose his thoughts, staring up at the sky. Arnold listened to the street noises and the beating of his own heart while he waited for the talking-to he so badly deserved and needed. It would feel good to get some reprimand for what he was sure was a week - no, a lifetime - misspent.

Finally, Gerald started speaking.

"I think you left a big piece of yourself here in Hillwood when you left and I think you never got it back. When we talk I don't sense that crazy, bold _optimism_ that you just...just flagrantly _defied_ anyone to challenge you on. You used to be the wildest kid I knew, man, stupid wild, just about willing to do anything and take any risk to set something right that didn't sit with you. Maybe that's still somewhat true, I don't know anyone our age out chasing illusion justice in South America."

"I think I know what you mean, though." Arnold had to agree, he'd lost that special reckless spark once he found his parents. Now he had something worth living for. Something precious he couldn't risk losing. It made him _too _cautious, perhaps. Even _if _he chased drug smugglers with his family.

"And I dunno I guess it just, just wrecked you. You're in stupid pieces, dude. All over the place with your motivations and desires and actions. I can't predict what the hell you'll do one moment to the next but I know it will probably seem stupid. Not _bold. _Stupid."

"I deserve that one," Arnold winced. He had been acting quite, _quite _stupid.

"Helga…" Gerald paused, seeing the light in Arnold's eyes when he mentioned her. "She worked her fuckin' ass off for this reunion. I _know _she's spent her whole life waiting for it, damn girl said so in her letters she put on display. And even though you guys ended up reconciling I guess, it just feels..._off. _Like, where's the smiles and happy ending, man? This shit don't feel right. And I _know_ it ain't her fault this time. So that makes it yours. You know how shit that feels to say? It's your fault this shit isn't right. I wish I could side with you on this one. But I can't, Arnold. I just can't."

Arnold was quiet for a few minutes, digesting the thrust of Gerald's argument. He'd made a mess of things in his return. Every step seemed like a mistake to him now, even when they had positive results. Where was that guiding light of confidence he'd known as a kid?

"And I think the problem is nobody has ever told you to your face how stupid you can be, and how wrong you are sometimes. I think you left Hillwood the wrong way, for the right reason. I think you came back to Hillwood the right way for the wrong reason. And I think everything having to do with Helga so far has been done wrong for the wrong reasons. And forget Lila for a second,"

"Oh I am done with her." Arnold interjected.

"Yeah so _forget _her for a second 'cause that shit is past us now. You gotta do right. You gotta do right by Helga and by yourself. Don't do the right thing for the wrong reason or the wrong thing for the right reason. Be right and do right. Whatever that is."

Arnold nodded, understanding completely.

"I'm going to make more mistakes, though, Gerald, I'm not perfect."

"Oh I know that man, I'm not saying not to make any more mistakes. You're Arnold, you fuck up repeatedly. But there's a world of difference from _trying _to do the right thing for the right reasons and being wrong versus _knowing _you are wrong and doing it anyway."

"So...wise, friend. What should I do?"

"You've always been the bold one, Arnold, not me. I do the _smart _thing, cause I'm not half as stupid as you, my friend. But that means you're free to do a stupid thing if it's the right thing. So just...try to do right by Helga, I guess."

Arnold chewed those simple words of wisdom thoughtfully, tasting their measure and truth. Gerald was right. _Regardless _how he felt if he had failed her, betrayed her in his heart, whatever other high-minded, romantic notions he had, if she loved him this much, she deserved him.

He knew what he had to do.

Slowly, Arnold stood on creaking, pissed-off legs. He still hadn't had a chance to stretch his legs properly since pitching for Helga all morning, and needed to clean off for their date.

"Thanks, Gerald. I got a date to catch. Real romantic spot, so I hear, and with a total knockout. Can't keep her waiting."

Gerald nodded, staying put.

"You gonna be okay, man?" Gerald asked.

"Yeah. I am. Thanks for the talk. You're right about everything. I think you set me down the right path. Thank you."

Gerald nodded solemnly. "Always listen to me, my friend. Gerald Johannsen always knows best."

Arnold fist-bumped his best friend and set off to the boarding house to get cleaned up and ready. Gerald waited until his friend was out of sight, and slowly stood up. He turned to face the front door of the Patakis, clearly wrestling with a decision. He rose two steps, and held his hand out to take the front door knob. Anger etched the lines of his face, a deep frown pulling the sides of his cheeks down. His hand rest on the door for a split second, then lifted off.

Shaking his head, he turned and skipped down the steps of the stoop, and walked across the street to meet Phoebe somewhere far away from Lila Sawyer.

* * *

Helga stood to finish her shower once she noticed the heat begin to wane from the downpour. She very quickly and efficiently washed her hair and scrubbed her skin with a dispassionate precision, getting out just in time for the water to start getting icy cold.

The steam of her prolonged soak had fogged the bathroom mirror beneath the large bulbous vanity lights, obscuring her features into a Helga-esque blob. She dripped in place, groping for a towel to at least get herself dried off before she started shivering.

Routine fell into place. After towel drying her hair she decided she should blow dry it and give it a thorough brushing, to really make that silvery bleach job shine. The treatment had made her hair cloud-soft and so light it seemed like it would just lift off her head once she had thoroughly dried and combed it. _That ought to draw the eye_, she mused with a kind of detached amusement.

_I ought to be giddy with anticipation. And freaking out a tiny bit._ Helga stared at the long haired siren in the foggy mirror, which she wiped into clarity with her tired hands. The well developed musculature of her shoulders and arms, the modest but still alluring swell of her breasts, the secretly cute and dainty nipples; Helga was a knockout topless. She liked that about herself, and normally, she would be nervous sick about showing her torso off in the little black dress she had picked for just this very occasion, but instead, she was merely regarding the grace and beauty of her body as a museum curator might assess his enviable collection of masterworks.

Her cell phone rumbled, lighting up with a text from Phoebe on the lock screen.

"_Are you all right?"_

Helga snorted and replied quickly.

"_Last I checked I have a left foot __and__ a left hand."_

The outraged reply came quick.

"_Helga be serious! I'm concerned!"_

"_Hi concerned, I'm Helga. Why did your parents name you that by the way?"_

"_I take it by your flippant replies you're fine! Where are you?"_

"_Home. Prepping for the date."_

Helga sent Phoebe a closeup shot of her pursed lips for emphasis. Had to keep the appearance up that all was well.

"_Do you need my help?"_

Helga yearned at the text on her cellphone screen. Absolutely, she wanted Phoebe there to comfort her, to worry over her, and to prop her up in this time of emotional desolation. But Helga was through with the dramatics of herself. She was done with everything. She would continue being alive, being Helga, and she'd pursue her interests and her amusements and the little flavors of her particular corner of the universe with genuine sincerity.

But she was done living.

There was no _point _to pursuing a life worth suffering for, any longer. A life without that suffering edge of tragedy wasn't really _living_, it was just _occupation_. Or _pre__occupation_, to be more precise; Helga's life was hereafter a collection of pleasurable preoccupations, and nothing more. Helga's passion was snuffed out, and with it, everything she would willingly weep or mourn, everything she would struggle and strife for. She had resigned herself to this pitiable, pithy existence as she allowed her heart to finally finish breaking over Arnold Shortman.

A wounded heart may heal, given time and proper nourishment of affection. A broken heart is broken forevermore.

And so it was that New Helga plucked up the phone and gave her merry reply, no hint of the devastation that was lying beneath her happy mask.

"_You know I'm not sure if he's into threesomes but I'll definitely ask. Been dyin' to see that cute little caboose a'yers in action for ages now. Do some stretching, he's hung."_

_That ought to shut her up, _she chuckled to herself. Phoebe had a perverse streak in her, Helga knew, but any hint of impropriety from her tall blonde best friend was usually enough to overheat the half-pint faster than anything. _Freedom to finish primping for this date_. The thought made her frown.

How far would she go? _How far __indeed__, just last night you were his perfect little sex kitten, and now you're all in conflicted knots over the idea?_

Helga scowled at herself in the mirror, rubbing a rose-scented moisturizing cream into her cheeks.

"How far will you go?" She demanded of herself, studying every tiny flaw she saw in the disturbing reflection staring back at her. "As far as _he_ goes, any time he wants, anywhere. That's where. You've finished the war, Helga old girl, it's time to enjoy the spoils. Don't you dare ask for his heart when the rest of him was hard fought enough. Coward. Hoarder. _Slut. _If he kisses you, take that kiss. If he fucks you, fuck him back twice as hard. And if he rejects you, _so be it. _If there's nothing left between you, not even _this_," she grabbed her bare breasts for emphasis, holding eye contact with that awful specter in the mirror. "Then there's _nothing left between you at all. _And you accept that. You already _have. _There's no more tears left in this body for him. If there's friendship left to spare, be glad you can even manage that."

She broke eye contact with herself, and quickly splashed water on her face to shake her gathering nerves. It seemed she was still not quite impervious to the anxiety of uncertainty, despite her hardened heart.

Her cell phone had come alive with fussy, meddling texts from her concerned and scandalized best friend during her little pep talk. Helga busied herself with intermittent, partially flirtatious and intermittent replies to Phoebe while she finished getting dressed and her makeup on.

She didn't look in the mirror the same way again. There was nothing in her eyes when she looked there except the windows to an empty attic that used to have a box labeled _Important_, but now merely held dust and memory.

* * *

Arnold adjusted his tie for what felt like the ten thousandth time, absolutely sure that the half Windsor knot was an insidious invention by a seven-fingered madman born without morals or empathy. He'd had his grandfather or his dad to tie all his ties until this point of his life, and he'd quickly discovered that observation makes a poor teacher when you are attempting to mime the movements in the reversed image of a mirror.

At last, he'd given in and had his grandfather help him after all.

He'd watched his grandad at approximately eye level as Phil patiently undid the mess Arnold had made of the simple knot in order to re-tie the fine lavender silk garment once again. Phil's knowing, paternal smile belied how proud he was of his grandson, the slightest hint of amusement in his gap-toothed grin.

Grandpa Phil sent him off with a crisp twenty dollar bill, tucking it lengthwise into Arnold's grey suit jacket pocket conspiratorially with a wink.

"This is for the garçon, my boy. Slip him this baby and you'll get the soup they _don't _wizz in, you know for the good customers."

Arnold couldn't help but laugh as he nodded, plucking the twenty from his pocket and replacing it with a small lavender pocket square, the same silk fabric as the tie. Together the two accessories set off the slightly off-white natural cotton of his dress shirt, a conservative South American cut with pearl snap buttons and an almost raw look to the material. It was very smart under his grey wool suit, not quite an Armani but you'd never tell the difference for the quality of cut and fit. The suit had been a present from Phil, as had the tie and pocket square.

Arnold sat to tie the rich brown wingtip leather dress shoes he'd brought from home, the flash of his silver wrist bangle peeking out from the cuff of his shirt and jacket. He'd dabbed to his wrists and throat a natural cologne he'd bought from a hemp farmer in Nicaragua, something with nag champa, orange blossom, and musk.

He even allowed some tentative styling of that wild hair, mostly just constructively mussing it into a loosely defined part off the left ear.

It turned out that when he took the situation seriously, Arnold cleaned up very well.

He'd been frank with Grandpa Phil, of course, telling him he had a serious date with Helga.

"Oh you and that unibrow girl are finally sealing the deal, eh? Good for you Arnold, I always liked her spunk. A'course, not as _fecund _as pretty miss Sawyer, but goodness gracious who _could _be? Except your grandmother of course."

"Grandma was..._fecund?" _Even asking the question felt gross, but Arnold was nothing if not voraciously curious about his family.

Lurid details twinkled in his grandfather's eye, but the grinning sprightly old man didn't answer except for a wink.

"Go on, Shortman, don't keep her waiting now."

Arnold's quick walk to the restaurant seemed to pass him in a total blur. Logically, he knew it took about twenty minutes by foot to reach the little French eatery, and yet he couldn't tell you a single event that had transpired or a single sight he laid eyes on for the entire duration of his walk.

For Arnold, his path took him clearly, directly to where Helga stood in front of the restaurant, face kissed with a slightly indifferent frown while she waited for his arrival.

He slowed to take in the details.

Helga had chosen a simple, little black dress. A low sweeping collar, off-the-shoulder cut number with a deep back that fell about three inches below the centerpoint of her shoulder blades. It was slit above the knee, and shimmered slightly with the sheen of a sheer fabric. Arnold imagined it felt quite supple against her body, and became instantly agitated at the thought.

Her arms and wrists were bare save for a small silver wristwatch, barely visible but for the glint of the sterling against the warm streetlight. She checked the watch, still unaware of Arnold's approach. He used the moment to get a better look at her in a candid peek.

Her lips were subtly pinker, glossy, with a more intense berry shade towards the center of her cupid's arch. Tasteful contouring made her appear to be wearing almost no makeup at all, but Arnold could tell that she'd done it up. _For me. _He knew this was true.

She was wearing a pair of black peep toe pumps, as well, with little ankle-strap buckles to accentuate her shapely calves. Her legs were otherwise bare and visible up to the top of the knee. She held a little cat-face shaped clutch purse - a cute little affectation Arnold hadn't anticipated. It looked like she was wearing pearls in her ears, or something else small and silvery white.

Which set off the high twist of her slightly curled silvery white hair quite nicely. Little curls fell at the nape of her neck and in front of her ears. She'd obviously spent time making her hair look like a delicate, high puffy cloud.

The overall effect was stunning. Simple, understated even, but undeniably feminine.

_Helga is beautiful_, Arnold realized all over again. His stomach felt tight and hot and squirmy just looking at her. His knees almost didn't cooperate to carry him forward.

Something else made him hesitate, as well. She looked bored.

She looked utterly uninterested in her surroundings, more accurately. As if she was there merely to participate. No trace of excitement, no bounce in the long legs which were so tantalizingly pushed up by the tasteful little black pumps. She was stock still, maybe even _impatient_

_I hope I didn't come too late, _he suddenly worried. Closing the distance quickly, he checked his time. He was a little early. _What's her deal? _Another mystery from Helga Pataki.

"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long," he finally called out once he was close enough to be heard at a low volume. He was maybe five or six feet away from her, and could just make out the scents of honeysuckle and coconut in her perfume.

Helga dropped her clutch purse, blue eyes wide with abject surprise. Her mouth hung open, clearly shocked at the sight of Arnold cleaned up before her. Her big eyes blinked rapidly, and she finally closed her mouth and stammered out a response.

"I-I-I wasn't waiting long, football head…" She had gathered her jaw off the ground, it seemed, but was still lost in the sight of him. He had to admit, he felt the same about her. She was just a knockout. He felt quite nervous, just being in her presence.

"Good," he managed, awkwardly gesturing to the front door of the restaurant off to the side. "Shall we dine, _mademoiselle_?"

Helga almost choked on a single outburst of laughter as she was stooping to get her dropped purse off the ground. Standing, she shook her head with a slightly sad-seeming smile. "You know I don't think I'll ever stop being surprised when you speak other languages."

"Oh I don't speak French, not fluently, just enough to insult a cab driver by mistake. I just speak Spanish and Portuguese."

"Oh _only_ Spanish and Portuguese."

"And the aboriginal language of the Green Eyes Tribe."

Helga tucked a coil of hair behind her ear, just shaking her head again with a mystified smile. "See? Never stop surprising me."

Arnold felt his heart in his throat when he managed to get out, "I never will."

Helga and he stared at each other, the atmosphere between them unmistakably charged. The chemistry between them was so profound, so singular, Arnold couldn't help but marvel at how comfortable it felt.

_Is that why you doubted her, ultimately? Is that why your heart betrayed her? _Arnold felt the ugly thoughts come unbidden, but they came nonetheless.

"Let me get the door for you," he finally spoke, breaking his thoughtful silence, and her strangely submissive deference to his musing. She felt _different _somehow.

_Probably just me noticing the difference in going on a proper date with her finally, _Arnold figured. Some part of him had to rationalize the slightly unexpected air that so far characterized their date.

"Yeah I guess I'll let you do that. Don't bother pulling out my seat though. The wait staff does that anyway." Helga patted Arnold on the shoulder as she passed him through the open door, and Arnold got a good look at the slightly distant look to her eyes.

Chalking it up to stress from the day, once again dodging the elephant in the room with the adroit deftness of a seasoned football player with shit hot jukes, Arnold checked in their reservation, and in short order they were seated at an intimately small circular table, tucked against a brick wall with a large Edgar Degas print hanging in a faux gold frame.

_Not bad for Hillwood,_ Arnold thought, his gaze casting over the intimate, clever decor. It wasn't Michelin starred by any stretch of the imagination, but such ostentatiousness wouldn't settle with Arnold's sensibilities. The humble approach to elegance charmed him. He realized he'd sat down without acknowledging his date, and re-focused his attention on Helga.

She was staring at him.

The whole time they sat down, she'd kept that same distant, slightly sad-seeming smile on her face, hands folded under her chin, resting on her elbows. A small votive candle in a fat little merry red glass flickered amber light on her striking features.

He studied her face closely, scrutinizing her adult appearance intimately for the second time since he came to Hillwood. The first had been their disastrous coffee date.

Puberty had ultimately been kind to Helga. She'd always had a slightly bulbous nose, and big ears that stuck out from her head, and a strong chin that was prone to pulling her frown into a scowl. Of course, as a kid, she'd had that powerful unibrow. She'd always had plump lips with a big cupid's bow, but as a kid it just made her snarl seem more menacing. And her hair - long, silky, straight, soft - had that precocious habit of sticking straight off her head in the ubiquitous twin pigtails she wore.

As a grown woman sitting across her, he could see the ghosts of those features - some would call them flaws - in the striking beauty she'd become. Her nose had kept its round tip, but the lengthening of her face made it less clownishly bulbous, and more button-like. Her head had caught up to her ears in the end. That chin now gave her face an almost almond shape, even when it carried her frowns and scowls. The unibrow was now bisected into two very prominent, bold eyebrows, kept no less dark over her eyes, and just as prone to arching in anger. Her lips had taken a sensuous fill to them, and made that frown all the more scandalizing. And that soft silky hair, now a ghostly silvery white, looked like a big soft cloud of spun moonlight.

She just looked beautiful. Arnold felt like he'd never get tired of her face. He longed to tell her so, but the anxious strain in his heart as he studied that wan smile kept his flood of compliments at bay.

He settled for small talk.

"I'm really glad we're finally doing this," he said as he plucked up a menu to break eye contact. He was aware she didn't do the same, and merely stared at him from behind the menu.

"Yeah, it's nice," she admitted. "You clean up great." Even her compliment sounded somewhat remorseful.

"Why thank you Helga, it's nice to hear you say so." Arnold tilted the menu down to smile at her. "I, uh, got too nervous to say so but you look absolutely beautiful tonight. You...clean up great, too."

Helga's eyebrows knitted and she flushed just slightly, looking away to bite her lip with a small smile. It seemed his words still mattered to her a great deal.

"I'm glad we got all that pitching in today," Arnold continued, setting the menu down on the table, forgetting it entirely to focus on her. "It felt great to slam some pitches into my partner's glove again. It's been way too long."

"P-partner?" Helga continued to remain being flushed.

"Yeah. That's how I saw it, anyway."

"I did, too," she replied softly, and left it at that.

Silence, the enemy of all dates, seeped into the space between them. Arnold pawed at topics to discuss while they waited to order, simply too nervous to act naturally. "I can't believe you're such a talented musician, too," he finally said, keeping the compliments rolling. "That whole concert was _amazing_, I didn't have a chance to say so yet. Too bad about your guitar."

Helga shrugged her bare shoulders, moving quickly to sip from her glass of ice-chilled water rather than answer him.

"I mean, it's all smashed up now right?" Arnold pressed, hoping to get her talking to him. _Why's she being so quiet? Is she nervous?_

"Yeah, generally when you smash a guitar it stays that way. Don't worry about it, Arnold, there's other guitars out there."

"Wasn't that one special?"

Helga leveled a stare at him. "Yes. What's it matter? I destroyed it, now it's gone. Move on, football head."

Arnold shrugged, not quite getting it. "Do you want me to fix it? I'm pretty handy with woodworking, I've done a lot of carpentry in South America."

"No, Arnold," she sighed. "I don't think you'd be able to do anything for it since it's splintered into a million pieces, and anyway, I'm done writing and playing music."

Arnold was shocked. He was sure she saw the disbelief on his face. "_Done?_ What do you mean you're _done writing and playing music?_"

Helga clucked her tongue, crossing her arms in front of herself defensively. "Just what I said. What are you hard of hearing, football head? I gotta draw you a diagram or something? What do you need it played back to you on a recording before you'll believe what I say?"

Arnold blinked, slapped with stinging sharpness at the cut of her words. _She's still upset about Lila._ Obviously, Arnold had been avoiding _that_ particular issue, to his detriment. Helga returned to a slight frown, icy silence overtaking the pause in their conversation.

"I didn't mean it like that," Arnold returned after a moment to let her comment sink in. "I was just trying to be nice."

"Yeah, I know, and you're very good at it. But it's also going to to be the end of you."

"Probably so," Arnold tried to smile, desperate to get the conversation - really, their entire date - back to happier territory. "It's already landed me in hot water more times than I care to admit. I didn't mean anything by that, though. Let's move on, I don't want to spoil our date."

"Yeah it'd be a pity if our long-awaited date was spoiled by some unintentionally stupid but well-meaning mistake you made," Helga snapped back, and then shut her mouth with a pronounced click of her teeth. Arnold stared at her. _Something is definitely wrong. I've upset her somehow, maybe even before the date even started. It has something to do with Lila._

"I've messed up somewhere, didn't I?" Arnold finally asked, desperate to fix the evening. His stomach was in sickly knots.

A look of pity and compassion caressed Helga's angry features into a more gentle, patient smile. "Oh yeah, big time. But, you just made me realize I've been ruining the date I've been dreaming of my whole life. I'm sorry, can we start over? I'll be nicer this time, scout's honor."

"You were never a scout," Arnold cautiously teased.

"Hey, true, but they're notoriously honorable. I can invoke their solemn name in an attempt to make peace, can't I football head?"

"Whatever you say, Helga," Arnold laughed.

"Hey there he is!" Helga smiled, reaching a hand out experimentally on the table. Arnold placed his larger hand in hers, and squeezed it. "I'm really glad we're doing this, I really am. I'm just a mess over this stupid Fuzzy Slippers thing. I _still_ want to go wring Lila's stupid sexy neck. It's only been a couple of hours since all that stuff happened; a shower's not gonna wash it all away and makeup won't cover up my frown. I'm sorry."

Arnold felt the tension in his stomach untie, ease up, and wash away at her kindness.

"I'm the one who should be sorry," Arnold started, intending to tell her _everything._ He was about to confess the error in his heart when the chips fell that day, and drench her in the sorrowful remorse he had for how much doubt he'd felt, how difficult it was for him to trust her on faith. And ultimately, he would tell her how he realized thanks to Gerald's help that _none_ of that mattered, it could be worked past, and he would do right by her. But as he looked into her slightly sad smile, those big blue eyes almost watering as they stared into his, Arnold made his final, fatal mistake that would haunt him for many months to come.

He didn't choose fight.

"...I didn't really want to think about today, so I was trying to change the subject." He technically told her the truth, but it wasn't the full scope of what he was thinking.

"It's fine," Helga assured him. "We don't have to talk about _that_ tonight. I'd rather if we didn't, actually."

"I'd rather talk about us, myself." Arnold admitted.

"Us?" Her lips twitched into a twist of a grin at the word.

"Well, Helga," he started, taking a big breath to steady himself for what he had rehearsed saying.

A throat clearing itself politely at their table interrupted him just before he was about to get started. The waiter. Of course, he would arrive to delay this inevitable moment.

"Let's wait till after the grub, hairboy. I hope you brought your good credit cards, 'cause I brought my appetite."

"Charming, Helga."

The waiter did his best to not awkwardly smile at the couple, knowing that something intimate had been briefly paused by his presence. Luckily, he was good enough at his job that the interference was short lived, and their orders quickly taken along with the small, simple menus.

"It's a shame neither of us would pass for 21, I could use some wine," Helga sighed once the waiter had left them. "I've heard good things about this stuff called _Merlot_, mostly that it's like a fistful of berries socked you in the jaw and got you drunk. My kinda time."

Arnold snickered, nodding. "I can only imagine what kind of hellion you become drunk."

"_Hellion_, you cad? How dare you, first of all, and secondly, fuck you." Helga flicked some water at Arnold with a fingertip dipped into her glass, resting her cheek on her other hand.

"Hey, watch it! Believe it or not, I actually did try to make myself look nice for like an hour."

"Just an hour? Male privilege."

Arnold and Helga laughed together, and it almost sounded genuine from her, just almost. Noticing the slightly affected difference slowly brought Arnold's laughter to an end. The pair studied each other with slightly dishonest smiles in silence, neither aware that the reason they were faking it was just beneath the surface. Arnold finally broke the silence, folding his hands together on the table and leaning closer before he slowly began to speak.

"Helga, as much as I love goofing off with you, I would kick myself for life if I didn't say what I've been meaning to say."

"Arnold, wait." Helga interrupted him, looking down at the table, her hands gripping the edge of the tablecloth with white knuckles, trembling slightly.

"I'm sorry, are you okay?" Arnold suddenly became concerned. She looked so...fragile. It was not a sight he wanted to see.

"Arnold, I know how you really feel." Her voice barely carried across the tiny space between them, she whispered it so tightly. "And you don't have to say anything. I understand. We don't have to ruin this nice night, this perfect little date I've been dreaming about since I was three, do we?"

She looked up at him, a profound, bottomless sadness creasing her pretty face. Arnold was shook to his core by that expression. It was like staring in the eyes of a dying woman in her final moments.

"And...and this night can go anywhere you want it to. I'm fine with...whatever you decide. I'm just happy to have it. That you've given me this dream. I'm not ready to let go just yet, I thought I was, but I'm not. I just want tonight. I'll be fine after that. Is that okay?"

Arnold tried not to gape at her, but could barely help the surprised expression he was wearing. _What does she think is happening? What have I done to her to make her so timid?_

"Helga," he started to try to argue with her, to figure out this strange dissonance in her behavior, but something stopped him short. She was begging him for a calm, drama-free date. Maybe she was just tired of the drama between them, all the misery and misfortune and mistakes. Maybe she was just sick of the back-and-forth, the uncertainty, the madness. Maybe to do right by her, he had to just agree with her wishes, and not belabor the issue with his clumsy confessions of love. If she didn't want to hear him say he loved her just yet, he'd wait, even if he didn't understand why.

"I get it. I'll wait until the evening is over, okay?"

Helga looked both relieved and heartbroken. It was so confusing for him to twist around this painful romance game with her, and her baffling expressions just pushed the pain deeper.

"Okay, football head. Once the date is over, I'll...let you say what I already know. I guess it's better that way, so there's no possibility for confusing the issue. We'll put the nail in the coffin. Until then, tell me I'm pretty and buy me expensive food and pretend like everything is fine, okay?"

"Deal. And I won't be pretending, everything is _great._ I have a pretty date that makes me laugh, what could be better?" Arnold's kind smile seemed to relax her a bit, melting the tension like the rays of the sun.

"The passionate, desperate, messy sex at the end of the date?" Helga flashed him a brilliant grin. _There's the foul-mouthed girl I love,_ he rejoiced.

_I just have to wait to tell her so_, he understood at last. Happily ever after had to come cleanly, or not at all. As he laughed at her dirty joke, he resolved to do it the right way for the right reason at last.

* * *

Helga leaned back in her chair, rubbing her belly rustically, a massive, unctuous French meal pressing up against her dress satisfyingly.

"Shit, those Frenchies can _cook_," she said. Arnold chuckled for the thousandth time that evening. _At least he's put at ease finally, _she was glad to realize. It had taken a lot of work to ameliorate his worries, a lot of playful banter and flirting, and Helga was mentally exhausted. _How did LIla do this her whole life? _Helga wondered, silently respecting her hated rival's stamina.

After she'd begged Arnold to hold off on dumping her outright in the middle of the date, his mood had gone from optimistically playful to downright grim and determined. Getting him off that track and back onto the optimistic, joyful Arnold she loved and wanted to remember was hard work.

But now, as they relaxed and enjoyed the warming sensation of being full of animal fats and starches, she was able to relax herself again with her work finally paying off.

"I didn't know you could cook and stuff an animal with all the other animals until today," Arnold groaned, holding his hand over his eyes as if to hide from God for the gluttonous behavior he'd just displayed. Helga took the moment to smile fondly at the boy she'd be saying goodbye to soon, genuinely thankful for this last evening. She'd already mourned him, said her goodbyes in theory. But it was a different thing altogether to actually pull it off in person. It was a bit like having your arm trapped under a huge boulder and needing to cut it off yourself to survive with a tiny survival knife.

"Stick with me, Arnold, you'll learn a lot more about animals and stuffing," Helga teased. She'd flirted quite sexually with him, boldly daring to hint at her willingness to do whatever he suggested or desired. From where she sat, her body was just about one of the last things she had to offer Arnold, who didn't love her, but seemed to want her to be happy at least. _Sweet kid, _she regarded him fondly.

She frowned, remembering that roughly this time yesterday, she was deeply worried she would be _cheap_ if she just slept with Arnold for the hell of it. And now she was so blithely accepting it. _It's funny what giving up allows you to do. There's basically no reason to care anymore if he thinks I am a slut or cheap. Kinda liberating._

"You know, that sounds like a great idea, Helga," Arnold smiled flirtatiously.

"Let's see how you feel after dessert."

"I thought you were implying you _were _the dessert."

Helga's thick eyebrows went up high, a hot steaming churn in her abdomen immediately roaring into place. Her legs trembled, and her breathing hitched. _Shit he can still do that? _It appeared that knowing he was not in love with her - really, regarded her only as a friend he cared for - did nothing to diminish her body's immediate response to his overtures.

"Down boy," she flicked a baguette crumb at him, grinning despite herself, cheeks awfully red.

"This date doesn't have to end here, though, I mean it," Arnold continued. "I'd kind of like to keep it going. You don't mind do you?"

"_Mind_? Arnold you stupid boy, nothing could make me happier." _That's a lie, nothing that happens from here on out will make me happy. _A bitter, sour thought, one she had unbidden. And yet, this bittersweet evening had more in store for her than she could anticipate.

Once the bill was paid - an eye-popping amount Arnold insisted he pay for without her help - the two stood outside the restaurant in the warm late summer evening, an awkward distance between them.

"So, football head, what do you have in mind?" Helga was sincerely curious. Her flat, emotionless disappointment didn't prevent her from wanting to know what was in store.

Arnold seemed unsure himself, but extended his hand for her. Helga looked at his hand like it was the executioner's axe. He seemed to notice her trepidation, so she quickly scooped his hand in hers and put on her best tsundere frown.

"I'll hold yer hand you sap, but hurry up and tell me what we're gonna do next!" Just the right dash of embarrassment and outrage in the delighted lilt of her voice. It sounded _almost _perfectly sincere.

"I thought we could just walk and talk for a bit."

"Sure, lead the way."

Arnold turned them out towards the city center and they walked, hand-in-hand, just like a real bona fide couple. Helga's belly was still fluttering, despite her grim outlook, and the disorienting dichotomy of her feelings and her physical reaction made her anxious and unsure. _I'm not over him, I'm just resigned to never getting him. _She realized the distinction, and felt terribly sad for the revelation.

Arnold, for his part, seemed lost in thought at first as well.

"You know why I came back to Hillwood, the real reason?" He finally broke their silent stroll with typical Arnold fashion, an outright bombshell of a topic. Of course Helga was dying to know, to hear from his lips the real reason all this was happening.

She just knew in her heart it wasn't for her, not really, not the way she'd hoped.

"No, but, you're holding my hand and this is a date, so your answer better have Helga G Pataki in there somewhere." Teasing was the best way to hide her impending disappointment, she decided.

"That's true," he started, laughing at her jovial answer. "I wanted to see you again, and see how life had treated you. I wanted to see if you ever stopped being so transparently mean to everyone, when really you were just vulnerable and wanted to be liked."

"Hey! Fuck you pal, I'm perfectly pleasant. And I'm not _vulnerable, _I'm _sensitive. _Big difference."

"Right, whatever you say, Helga. But it really was about seeing you. Of course I wanted to see Gerald and Phoebe and all the others, but, it was you I _had _to see."

Helga chewed on her bottom lip, dead sure that this boy was lying to her or to himself just like always, and thinking she had witnessed the _proof _that he didn't know he didn't love her himself. She had never considered - _could _never consider - that what she witnessed with Lila was a moment of admitted weakness and confusion. Arnold was lost to her, and in fact, Lila was right, she _never had a chance._

So why was she begging Arnold internally to keep going, keep talking sweet, and lie to her? _I'm so weak, i'm so weak. I want him to lie and be stupid and pretend to love me, I want the pretty fake lie, I want it._

"Go on," was all she managed to croak out.

"Well, being engaged to...someone else," he cautiously avoided _her_ name, "meant that I had to set right in myself all the confusion and misgivings and mystery about you. Why you didn't write. I was unsure, and, I couldn't let myself do something so serious being so unsure."

"So it was for her sake." Helga flatly accused him.

"No, _no, _it was for mine. Selfishness, it was just selfishness. I had to see you, and figure out if you felt _anything _for me, anything like that passion I saw from you as a kid. It haunted me, and I wanted to know more."

Arnold went quiet, and so did Helga. _Why is his every word so sweet to these stupid ears? I know he's either a snake lying to butter me up or just an idiot confused about today. I already __mourned__ him, I can't let this get to me._

She hardened her heart further, and broke the silence.

"So what do you think now?"

"After that show, the night we spent together, and that baseball field? I know my answers. But I want you to hear my reply now."

Helga was dead positive she was about to feel sick. Nothing good was about to happen. _And yet I am so very ready to hear this sweet lie, I've waited so long._ It was odd to be prepared in dread for the killing stroke, even as you welcomed it as a long lost lover.

"Well, Arnold...I'm listening." Helga stopped, turning to face him. They stood under a lone street light, the amber glow casting an unearthly warmth to their expressions. She stared at him, a big part of her starving mad for the secrets he was about to spill, even if she didn't believe a word of them. She wanted to etch, bore the way he looked in that moment in her mind for future recollection.

_I love him_, she desperately pleaded in her thoughts. It was the most solemn prayer she'd ever uttered.

"Helga," he started, pausing to search her features. _What does he see right now? A desperate woman at the end of her pitiful rope? Someone he so desperately, foolishly thinks he needs to try to love? What am I to you, Arnold? _Her thoughts raced in the pregnant gibbous pause that hung in between them.

"I'm in love with you."

Deep, deep down beneath the bottom of Hell, further down than the backside of a black hole, wretchedly deep and under the firmament of the cosmos, there is a hole where the souls that have lost all hope and purpose end up. They must plummet for an eternity, dragged down at speeds of such meaninglessness that description is impossible, and tumble in this void without purchase or pause to reach it. Only the loneliest, most crippled souls end up there, forsaken by all light and that which might comfort. Helga felt the world open up and drop her there in an instant once those long dreamed of, most hated, most treasured, impossible perfect _wretched_ words were uttered.

Arnold said he was in love with her and it shattered her heart to pieces.

Learned men have attempted to tell of a painful joy, and there are collections of poems filling libraries the world over that attempt to grasp for this tragic paradoxical imprisonment. None can do it justice, for none who have ever experienced it and lived will ever speak a word of that dark time and place, that yawning void below, below, far beneath anything and everything that swallowed them up. It breaks the words as they come to the page, shattering them like a hammer on crystal rapping smartly and with intent to kill, even as the bottomless emptiness struggles to reach out and be known. It's unnameable. It's nothing.

That bleak ebon gulf folded Helga Pataki within it like a hospital blanket and called her home.

"Helga, Helga are you okay?" Arnold shook her gently, his hands clutching her arms. She blinked free a sudden deluge of fresh tears, aware suddenly that she'd welled some up, and took a gasping breath, aware suddenly that she'd been holding it.

"Okay?" Helga choked out, her hands rising to smear the tears she'd so unexpectedly cried out when she was so certain she was done crying for him. It seemed that well was bottomless, and the gallows irony of it was crushing and absolute. "Arnold, you just said that you're in love with me. I've...I've waited to hear those words my whole life." She felt a laugh bubble up through the mucous and tears, and it fell out of her unwanted, unbidden.

"But, you're crying. So much." The concern squeezed the aching numb of her heart.

"It seems I am," she smiled at him, struggling to make the expression less pitiful than she was sure it seemed. "I'm okay though, I promise."

Arnold sort of watched her helplessly while she kept frantically smearing the tears off her cheeks and sniffing hugely, struggling to keep a happy face on while she felt herself dying as the moments hurtled by.

"Do you want to go to a more private place and talk about this?" Arnold's concern sliced through her again.

"Y-yes, I can't stop, I don't know what's wrong with me?" Helga smiled up at him, feeling absolutely gutted, hollow, destroyed, and so desperately trying to keep his mind at ease. "But where can we go? I'm such a mess."

Arnold took her hand and started walking quickly down the street. "A hotel. I'll get us a suite. It'll be big and private."

"A suite? Where do you get all this money?" Laughter continued to trill her voice, as if the emotions in her soul were simply erupting out at random.

"Does it matter right now? C'mon."

Helga fell into step behind him, holding his hand, watching his back, feeling nothing.

* * *

Arnold had not expected Helga to literally pounce on him the instant the hotel door was closed. She was all lips and teeth and tongue, hands roughly pushing him against walls, doors, the bed. Tearing clothes off him, ripping sheets off the bed, scattering them behind her in her pursuit.

It was equally as terrifying as it was thrilling and erotic.

He'd shoved his hand up between her legs, fingers pressing against fabric so lacy and soft and skimpy it made his stomach flip hard in his abdomen at the sheer sin of it. She'd prepared herself for something like this to such a degree, and now he was enjoying the mewling sounds of pleasure she made against his neck while he enjoyed her efforts with fingers and palm.

Everything about Helga was hot.

Before her, he'd never even really been preoccupied with sex. He'd been a typical teenage boy, of course, and had the awful riot of hormones pound in his veins and make him stupid and single-minded around pretty girls. He'd even had a few clumsy groping sessions with a girl or two, getting as far as under a bra before the circumstances and his own lack of guts shorted the experience. But he'd never been a very bedroom-minded person; Arnold had other concerns that consumed him.

And yet, when he was with Helga, and she was scratching his torso like she was a cat marking her territory, Arnold felt so sexual and so sublimely masculine and _virile_ that he could barely comprehend a moment he wasn't mentally shrieking "_SEX!" _as loud as possible.

If their evening after the party had been intense, passionate, and profoundly cathartic like a wedding night, this was vicious, animalistic, and desperate like a conjugal visit with a death row inmate.

Helga had a filthy mouth, too. It made the experience so profoundly _sinful_ and erotic, as she growled and purred and quite directly encouraged him with _exactly_ what to do. She said things to Arnold that made him almost sick with embarrassment even as they made him work twice as hard.

It turned out when he had Helga at the helm of this sexual partnership, he had a nearly inexhaustible stamina as well.

Something around their sixth time rawly coupling, against the television cabinet, loudly rocking the flat screen in the flimsy wood he had Helga pinned against, she had stopped using words altogether and was simply filling her teeth with him. Arnold was dead certain that he would look like a wild animal had attacked him the next day, covered in scratches, bites, and bruises from tip to toe.

And in a way, a wild animal _was_ attacking him.

Eventually, long after they'd broken one of the small chairs at a desk table, tipped the television to the floor, yanked the shower curtain right off the wall, and alerted everyone in a six room radius that their hotel room was a den of befoulment and unabashed _fucking_, their bodies had at last given in to the demands of _staying alive_ and forced them to stop. They lay in rough proximity of one another, helga with a bruised and spank-reddened thigh draped over Arnold's bruised, inkvine-scarred pelvis. Both had been catching their breath and struggling through a devastating afterglow. Arnold was dimly aware of the various wounds he'd sustained in their many sessions, but more than that felt the muscles in his legs, abdomen, and back _screaming_ with the burn of lactic acid build up.

He was steadying his breath when he looked over at Helga, who was slowly rolling over towards him, hand creeping spiderlike towards his groin.

"Hold...hold on," Arnold breathed, his hand moving to catch hers and merely squeeze it. "Needs more time."

"More," she begged, in a way that sent a shiver of thrill up Arnold's spine.

"The spirit's willing but the flesh is weak." Arnold rolled over as well, meeting her halfway, his hand leaving hers to cup her face.

He kissed her, a kiss of forgiveness and love.

She kissed him, and though he didn't know it, it was a kiss of resolve and mourning.

"Arnold, please don't leave," she whispered against his mouth, and it filled him with such passion he was fit to burst.

"I won't," he lied, and rolled on top of her.

* * *

Helga awoke feeling like someone had liberally scrambled her insides with an egg beater, and then walloped her thighs and ass with a baseball bat for good measure.

A groan of the dying escaped her as she tried to sit up in the dim light of the morning. The sun had not yet risen, but Arnold was standing at the foot of the bed, staring at her.

"What time is it?" She grumbled, curling over her abdomen when the muscles in her gut outright refused to allow her to sit upright.

"Just before sunrise, maybe five thirty," Arnold answered her quietly. He was toweling himself off, she recognized, and then noticed the slight light from the bathroom, the smell of soap and shampoo. Arnold had taken a shower.

"When's checkout?"

"Eleven. I ordered breakfast for the room, it should be here around nine. You should go back to sleep." His voice was so soft, and so lovely. She wept inside herself that this would be the only morning after she ever got with him.

"I don't wanna," she fibbed, pulling a pillow over her face to blot out the light. "I wanna be awake if you're awake."

"I'm still not quite off Brazil time, babe." She felt him plop into the bed next to her, and her skin ached to be touched by his hands again. "I couldn't get back to sleep and needed a shower after last night. I'll lay her with you and watch some television quietly. Get some sleep."

"No," she whined, her fingers creeping around the bed, looking for his. "Don't wanna."

"Liar," he teased, his big fingers finding hers and knitting them together. "Besides, you snore, and it's so cute I wanna see it again."

_I guess it's the last time he could see it, so he wants to make it count,_ she thought. It was an unwelcome, depressing thought, made all the more tragic for it's truth.

"Just...come over here and fuck me, I'll stay awake, I promise," she began, but a yawn cut her short. "I'm not sleepy."

"You need a break, Helga," he laughed, and she felt his warm, soft lips kiss her shoulder. Her back instinctively snuggled backwards to curl up against his bare belly. She reached down behind her and felt nothing but a slightly damp towel where the prize she sought she be.

"Lose the towel," she warned. "I want breakfast."

"You're kidding me. Dude, I am _so sore_. How are you not sore?"

"I am, I just don't care, I want you inside me somehow so hurry up." Her voice lacked _any_ of the sexy purr she intended it to have, and instead as a petulant croak.

"What a charming invitation," Arnold chuckled, a big strong arm curling around her as he spooned her into the bed and covers. Helga immediately felt the warmth of him begin to seduce her to sleep again. "I'll take you up on the offer after you've iced your sensitive bits and taken an advil. Deal?"

"Deal…" she sleepily agreed, too blissed out and fighting the creeping sadness and dread to care that this was all a lie.

"And Helga?"

"Hmm?"

"You're my girlfriend now." Not a question, just a statement.

"Mhm." Sleep overtook her, sure that such a nice dream wouldn't last, but falling into it just the same.


	18. Chapter 18 - Young Love is Cheap

A/N: Apologies in advance for the lack of secondary characters in this chapter. I'm not done with Rhonda, Sid, Eugene, Thad, or Harold. I know this fic has been a lot of AxH a lot of the time and this chapter will be no exception. Trust me that the side characters will get their side stories told, it's just time for Helga and Arnold right now.

If you are interested, once I finish this fic I will be transposing it to Archive of Our Own. I'm in the market for fan art for my chapters, so if you have any recommendations...

Keeping Arnold: Chapter 18, Young Love is Cheap (It's Everywhere)

"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides." ― André Malraux

* * *

The smokey smell of bacon and robust richness of coffee woke Helga from a sleep of total exhaustion. The familiar ache she dimly recalled from the previous early morning interlude was still present, but this was overwhelmed into mild silence by the ravenous hunger that ripped through her. She leaned up on one arm, rubbing her eyes with a sleepy scowl.

The hotel room was mostly straightened out, the TV righted in the dark wood cabinet, the table they flipped upright in the corner, and no sign of the curtains and blankets they had scattered everywhere. She stared at the heavy blackout curtains over the only window opposite the door, aware that there was probably a lot of hateful sunlight waiting to stream in and violate her eyes, and thankful someone - _Probably Arnold _\- had put them back on their hanger.

Speaking of Football Head, she didn't see him, or hear him moving about. _I guess he left after ordering the breakfast, _she reasoned numbly. _We were done anyway, so I'm fine with it._

Helga slowly slid from the king size bed, and was surprised to see she was wearing her panties. She definitely didn't remember putting them back on. _Arnold again. Gentleman. _She looked down at the lean curvature of her belly and hips, regarding the bruises on her thighs and the redness of her knees. Her toes wiggled and splayed, then scrunched tight, popping some of the bones satisfyingly.

The chair they had destroyed was nowhere to be seen, even the splinters missing, so she just stood in front of the table where the pile of food was and started to shovel it in. Tearing open a little discreet packet of syrup, she liberally drizzled it over the big plate of bacon and the stack of flapjacks, feeling _nothing _except hungry.

As she guessed, Arnold had tried one last time to be with her and failed. _Helga just isn't his cup of tea, even if he seems to enjoy fucking my brains out. _Regarding that passionate, multi-hour marathon, Helga had gathered a healthy storehouse of erotic memory she'd be able to pull from for years in her private moments. _At least the sex was life changingly awesome_._ I'm ruined on hetero sex for life. Nothing will ever match that. I guess I can try dating women for awhile. _

She left the plate of food once she'd eaten her fill, leaving a few scraps for a snack on her way out the door.

The TV flickered alive with the remote in her hand, and cartoons filled the slate black screen colorfully, a noisome racket of little happy animals making the best of a difficult situation. Some cartoon ponies she'd never cared to try to get into had a lot to say about friendship, apparently, so she stood there half naked in front of their display to dispassionately watch their antics.

Nothing had ever felt so empty.

_I guess we are done finally, _she thought. _This was inevitable and I knew it would be. I guess I just didn't want to be right. I wanted to believe his sweet lie, I wanted to be his girlfriend. Hell, I was waiting to be his __wife__._

That sudden, stark realization made the pancakes and bacon in her belly seem like a heavy stone.

_Oh well, _she mentally sighed, turning toward the front door and bathroom to get a shower in before she left. _I guess it's Helga alone at last-_

The front door knob jiggled and the door swung open, and Arnold stepped in quickly, carrying one of her pink suitcases. He saw her and immediately smiled broadly, setting the suitcase down and striding quickly to slip his arms around her stunned shoulders in a powerful hug. Helga just stood in his embrace, agog at his presence, his _return. _

He smelled like clean cotton and hotel shampoo. Helga's hands lifted to curl into the back of his shirt, her face burying into his neck with a little whimper.

_I want this, _she realized. _I will do anything to have it._

She realized he was not wearing the suit from the night before. She slowly pulled off his chest and tilted her gaze slightly upwards. _I love that he's taller than me._

"Hey, Arnold." She quietly murmured.

"Yo, Pataki."

"You're back."

"Yeah sorry I waited until you fell asleep and took care of things. I helped housekeeping take the busted chair out and paid for the damages at the front desk. Then I hailed a cab to your place and Brian let me throw some of your clothes in a suitcase for you. I figured you didn't want to try to put the shredded remnants of your dress on and walk out of here." He stroked her cheek fondly, a low chuckle at the imagined thought. "Not that _I'd_ mind."

Helga very very vividly recalled when Arnold had taken the front of her dress in one hand and torn it right off her body. The memory filled her with an unwelcome heat.

"Oh. Thanks. That's a lot of shit you did. Brian let you in?" _That was probably the most awkward moment in history, I'm sad I missed it._

"Yeah...more like, I just grabbed the clothes he'd set out for you and put them in the suitcase he'd _also_ set out for you. Dude seemed to see this coming. Kinda spooky."

_Brian had known I'd need a change of clothes since I never came home. _Guilt swooshed around in her veins along with adoration for Brainy.

"Sounds like him. Thanks, Football Head. You didn't have to do this."

"I wasn't about to let my girlfriend stagger home in destroyed clothes."

She nearly choked. "G-girlfriend?! Whoa, hold up, what?"

Arnold just looked at her like she was screwing around with him. "Yeah...unless you changed your mind?"

"I didn't...what? Change? Girlfriend? What? You and? What?"

Arnold stepped away from her and smiled a little bit, off to inspect the breakfast she'd destroyed on the little side table. "Oh, good, you ate."

"Wait, hold up, back that horse up, cripple it, and walk it by me real slow again."

Arnold popped a thick slice of syrupy bacon into his mouth and looked awfully confused at her. "I mean, I said you should be my girlfriend now early this morning," he paused to chew. "And you were kinda sleepy but you agreed. I mean, I thought you did. Obviously you didn't remember." Swallowed. "So...I guess I'll say it again."

Helga held her hands up to her chest, covering her naked breasts in confusion. Arnold strode right back to her, taking her hands in his.

"Helga Geraldine Pataki, you should be my girlfriend."

Helga looked up at him, pretty sure she looked pathetically afraid in that moment. Everything she ever wanted was standing right in front of her, caring for her, _taking _care of her, and asking to keep doing it for an indefinite future. It was like her dreams stepped into reality, and made themselves physical with robust vigor and destructive strength. It was _terrifying_.

_I want this, I want him. Say yes. Say __yes__. _She struggled with the decision. _But this is all an illusion. A mistake he's making. He said so himself, he just didn't have the heart to love me. I'm someone he pities that will have sex with him. If I say yes this will all end badly. It will be so bad it will never be okay again. I'll end a lifetime of friendship. I'll lose him. I'll lose everything. _

She clutched at his hands as hard as she could, searching his earnest expression for some signal, some _sign _that she could forget what she saw and heard him say to Lila. That all her misgivings and fears were unfounded. That she could trust him and love him cleanly.

_Or, third option. _Helga considered saying yes...and riding this thing out to its natural conclusion with _intent_. If he was mistaken, if he was foolish and blindly trying to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, she could _show him._

_I can say yes now, and help him one last time. I can help Arnold grow past me and see he doesn't need to sacrifice himself for my sake. That his heart is true, and there's no reason to try so hard on my account. And...and if he calls me his girlfriend and treats me so nicely in the interim, that's just what I always wanted isn't it? I can say yes and still do the right thing for him __and__ me. It doesn't have to end now...I can do this._

Helga realized doing this would mean murdering her heart. The empty cold aloofness she felt about everything since overhearing Arnold would only amplify. She'd crucify herself on her love, and die for Arnold's freedom. It would be the last of Helga Pataki.

_It's the only way._

She would try to do this as gently, kindly, and compassionately as possible. She'd have to carefully guard her feelings, not get too caught up in the experience of dating Arnold, and when the right time came, end it with absolute and overwhelming resolve. If she kept going back and forth with Arnold, denying him, then flying to his arms only to deny him again, the poor misguided idiot would waste his whole life trying to make her...happy. _At least he wants me to be happy, _she fondly realized.

Helga turned that yawning ever-present void in her soul where her happiness and love for Arnold used to dwell into a tangible solid form in her mind. She imagined herself kneading it into rigidity with the grit of her strength, then forging it in the furnace of her endless love, and finally hammering it into usefulness on the anvil of her stubborn stupidity. What was left was the cold, precise instrument she would carve a proper, free life for Arnold from this mess of an affair. _Only I can do this. Only I can set him free. I can give him everything Helga Pataki has to offer and show him it's not what he wants. I can weather his affection and all this physical intimacy, and cut him loose when the time is right. Only I can. So I will._

Helga stared up into Arnold's green eyes and felt her stomach flop as she answered him.

"Yes."

* * *

Phoebe was busily catching up on her studying when she got the call.

Even though she'd taken a short sabbatical to help her best friend see Arnold's return, classes were technically still in term for her. She was not about to fall behind on any account. She had goals for her studies and career, and chased them with all the seriousness and resolve at her disposal.

But even someone as studious as her put her books away when her best friend called her the Night After.

Brian had confirmed Helga hadn't returned home that evening. It meant she was either with Arnold, or someplace...less secure. Phoebe tried not to consider the myriad terrible possibilities if she hadn't ended up staying with Arnold.

Her texts to her wayward best friend had gone unanswered, of course. _That's Helga, perpetually unavailable precisely when her expedient response is needed most._ She loved her best friend, but Helga's terrible basic texting courtesy habits was easily one of her most challenging traits as a friend.

So she basically leapt for her phone when it finally rang sometime around noon that day.

"Hello?! Helga! Are you okay? Where are you?! Did everything go well with Ice Cream? Is he there?! Tell me what happened!"

"_Criminy, slow it down Pheebs. It's like a girl can't disappear to a seedy hotel room to bang her date without getting read the Riot Act."_

"Hotel room?" Phoebe felt herself flush at the ribald implication that Helga and Arnold had...bedded one another. Again. "Is that where you have been?"

"_Yeah, Arnoldo sprung for a swanky suite downtown. Forget what I said about 'seedy,' boy has more class than that, surprising everyone. Big marble garden tub with a jacuzzi and __everything__."_

Phoebe's mind raced. "So...things went well with Ice Cream?"

"_Why do you keep calling him that old name?"_

"S-sorry, force of habit I suppose. Arnold, then."

"_Yeah I mean you are gonna have to get a __new__ habit, it wouldn't be seemly for you to be calling my boyfriend a code word anymore."_

_Boyfriend? _"Boyfriend?"

"_That's what I said, clean your ears out, Pheebs. Sucker basically begged me once he saw what a goddess in the sack I am."_

"_Who are you lying to, Helga? Is that Phoebe?" _Phoebe heard Arnold on the other line, sounding annoyed. _"Let me set her straight, give the phone here."_

"_Not a chance, Football Head. Get your own best friend to harass! Ow! Leggo!"_

Phoebe listened to the brief sounds of a struggle ensue on the other line. Something brushed against the receiver, sounding papery and loud, before she heard Arnold far more clearly.

"_Phoebe I don't have long, she's all arms and legs and mad as hell-"_

"_Fuck you! Give it back or you'll answer to Betsy!"_

"_Just know she's fine, I'm fine, and we're dating now. Ouch! Not there!"_

"_Haha! An opening! Look alive, hair boy, you got a Pataki as an opponent! Do you really think you can afford to be distracted?!"_

"_Ouch! Helga! Ow! Fuck!"_

"_Hahahahaha! Not so cocky now are we? C'mere!"_

"_Ah~ shit! Not there, w-wait, we're in public."_

Phoebe felt her ears turn red as she very clearly heard Arnold moan lewdly into the receiver. She no longer heard Helga.

"Arnold, I'm going to hang up now. Can you and Helga meet Gerald and myself at the diner for lunch in an hour? We need to debrief."

"_There's already enough of that going on today," _she heard Helga suddenly on the receiver. She apparently had the phone back now.. _"But we'll meet you there just as soon as I get what I want~"_

The call ended. Phoebe had to put the phone down and hide her face in her hands. She had no idea her best friend was so..._shameless. _It would have been unexpected if it were not _Helga._

She was still agonizing over the embarrassing carnality of it all when Gerald came into the living room with the tray of tea and chocolates Phoebe sent him to fetch. In the Hyerdhal household, there were always delicious loose leaf green teas and a selection of gourmet chocolates to choose from. Phoebe and her mother shared a sweet tooth for the luxury stuff, and she and her dad both loved to try new teas.

Gerald set the small tray on her knee-height table, sitting next to her with crossed legs.

"What's up babe?"

Phoebe gave him a mortified look. "I think I just...overheard...Helga performing...an act of amorous expression."

"Say again?"

"With Arnold."

Gerald's eyebrows went up high. He didn't immediately reply, instead calmly scooping some of the loose leaf tea into Phoebe's floral printed porcelain teacup, and then gently pouring the nearly-boiled water over them. She'd shown him how to pour a proper cup of tea in High School, a trick he'd not forgotten apparently.

"Good for Arnold," he finally said. "Does that mean Helga finally called you?"

"Yes," she sighed, removing her glasses to clean the lenses with a slight frown. "I arranged a lunch meeting at the deli, I hope you don't mind."

"Another one? Guess I haven't eaten _everything_ on the menu yet, might as well finish it off."

"I know it must seem tiresome and redundant, but the nearby options are limited. Besides," she placed her glasses back onto her face, the room snapping back into focus. "It's tradition."

The two of them agreed on that much. They shared some tea and munched on the French truffles Gerald had brought in, both pretty sure that they had not expected events to turn out so _well._ There had been too many variables, too many complications. And yet, the party they threw was legendary; people will be speaking about it in awed, reverent tones for decades in Hillwood. And what's more, they cornered and captured Fuzzy Slippers - Lila, she had to remind herself - thus ending a nigh on lifetime of terrorism and emotional harassment. It felt good to finally solve the biggest mystery of her lifetime. Closure was good for the soul.

But they had agreed the night before, what Hillwood needed was _catharsis. _Stage three of their plan had always been to fill the Pataki beach house with their friends and have a memorable time to give Helga and Arnold a concrete anchor to solidify their nascent relationship to. Now, it carried a new purpose. It would help Hillwood heal.

"You think Helga'll still be on board?"

Phoebe paused for a moment to consider her boyfriend's question.

"I don't see any particular reason she would refuse, but Helga has proven to be a frustratingly unpredictable element in all of this. I cannot auger her response any more than I can read the future in these tea leaves."

"Guess we'll just have to see. Girl's crazier than anyone we know, but she's bound to be on board a beach trip with my man Arnold."

"Yes. Big Bob might be a small factor but nothing to concern ourselves with. If there isn't to be a lot of unfortunate latent animosity between all our friends for the circumstances of this past week, a little recreation and group activity will be necessary."

"Just tell me when to start spreading the word."

Phoebe unwrapped one of the truffles from its lavender foil, delicate fingers plucking it free and popping it into her mouth. She practically moaned when she bit into the ball of chocolate, badly needing a little serotonin after such a stressful week.

Gerald snickered as he watched his girl enjoy her chocolate. "Plus, I can't wait to see you in a two piece again."

Phoebe almost choked on her truffle, stifling the uncouth noise she made at her lover's ribald suggestion with a hand to her chocolate-smeared lips. She swallowed the lump of swiftly melting treat, giving Gerald a sternly disapproving look. "You're out of luck, I only have last year's one piece."

"The one with the stripes and frilled skirt? Okay that's cute too. I'll live."

Phoebe swatted at Gerald's shoulder and chuckled, all to happy to be flirting with him again. The stress of the whole Fuzzy Slippers thing had put them on serious edge. _They _needed catharsis, too.

"I'm glad you will be able to settle for less. Really, I might be looking forward to this beach house trip more than anyone."

"Oh yeah?" Gerald spoke around a mouthful of truffle he seemed to be enjoying as much as she had enjoyed hers.

"Mm. I...do have to go back to university soon. My sabbatical won't last forever. And I want to make one last big set of memories with all of us together, including Arnold and Helga, before I go back."

Gerald got a little stone-faced, frowning slightly. "Oh right."

Phoebe felt serious turmoil. "We had to address this eventually."

"Yeah I know. Damn. Guess it might as well be now."

"If I had my druthers, I'd pack you in my suitcases and tuck you under my bed at my dorm. But we find ourselves in a reality where that isn't possible."

"It's a damn shame, too, because I make a good pillow."

"You do," she agreed completely sincerely. "So what do we do?"

Gerald shrugged. "I thought we agreed to date again, give this crazy thing another shot."

"Well...we specifically agreed to _make love _if you recall the events of the evening I stayed at your frat house. I didn't know if we agreed to anything else."

"Has anyone ever told you that you can be damn unsexy?" Gerald snorted. "Yeah, from where I sit we are _a thing_ again. Unless you don't wanna be. Which would be a damn shame."

"No, I want to. But, the distance is what separated us the first time. It won't shrink at our urging and will only continue to be a big problem."

"Only if we let it babe. I can visit you. There's skype calls. All kinds of shit we can do to make it work. I _want _to make it work, girl. You're everything I want in a woman. Smart, damn smart, funny, cute, and even though you can be pretty _unsexy _sometimes, when you _want _to be you're a damn Aphrodite. I can't walk away from you, and I don't want to. Be my girl," he leveled his large, gorgeous light brown eyes to hers, very seriously and plainly proclaiming his feelings in a way that devastated her defenses. "Because I love you."

Phoebe recalled suddenly the dizzying thrill of being Gerald's girl. She wanted to scoop him up into a hug, press his head to her bosom, and kiss his eyes. Instead, she just blushed a little, and nodded.

"O-okay. I love you, too."

The tea and truffles were soon forgotten by the two old friends who had become inseparable lovers with the gradual passage of time, as they worked to express themselves by means other than words.

* * *

Arnold waved Phoebe and Gerald over to their booth with an enthusiastic, sincere smile. It felt good to finally be on the upswing, and to have his best friends join him and his _girlfriend_ at their old favorite spot.

_My girlfriend, _Arnold thought. _It's so easy to think of her that way. Like, the easiest thing I've ever done._

Helga was leaning against him, inside seat against the window. She had her hand in his lap, held in tame quiescence by his own. If he let her digits go, they were sure to fiddle with his zipper and start trouble.

_She hasn't stopped touching me since this morning_, he recognized. _Her engine is just always running I guess. Who knew Helga was so __thirsty__._

Everyone but Arnold.

His friends quickly filled in, Phoebe sliding opposite Helga with a curious smile on her small face, and Gerald opposite Arnold with a much sloppier grin.

It seemed that the season was uncharacteristically _Springlike _for being late September.

"What's up, my man?" Gerald nodded towards Helga, who returned the silent gesture with a blank expression.

"We're dating," said Arnold. "Officially."

Phoebe slapped the table rapidly with both hands, bouncing in excitement, and clapped her hands together so quickly it sounded like one continuous retort. She let out a squeal of joy, lunging to grasp Helga's hands which had left Arnold's lap.

"Oh Helga! Congratulations! I'm so happy for you! You must be so excited! This is so exciting! Are you excited? I'm so _excited!"_

Helga grinned and shrugged. "Yeah yeah, it's real exciting stuff. Take it down a notch though?"

"How could I repress my overjoyed excitement at a time like this?! You've dreamed of this day for _years_ and it's always been my hope it would finally happen for you and now it _has _and I'm just so excited and happy!" And then she squealed again.

Helga and Arnold and Gerald all winced simultaneously at her high pitched peal of exuberance.

"Phoebe. Calm." Helga playfully growled.

"Calming!" Phoebe said, still bouncing in her seat and not calming in any regard at all.

"Damn man, just damn. Finally got on board the Pataki train?" Gerald shook his head with a grin at his best friend. Arnold hoped he looked as happy as he felt.

"More like I failed to get out of the way of the Pataki train and she ran me over."

"Hey. Signs were posted. Not my fault you willingly laid on the tracks." Helga was reaching over to soothingly pat her excited best friend's squirming head.

"True. I'm the one that asked you out anyway."

"More like _commanded_. 'Helga, be my girlfriend.' Not exactly how I pictured it but hey, it can't all be love songs and poetry. Girl's gotta take what she can get."

Phoebe finally settled down and was merely grinning at the two of them without bouncing around.

"Is that how it happened? Was it over dinner? By candlelight? Was he holding your hand? Oh my goodness Helga stop holding back on me!" Phoebe sounded absolutely tortured by the wait.

"Actually," Arnold started to speak, but Helga held up a hand to silence him. She shot him a look, and something _blank_ in her eyes startled Arnold. Something was communicated there, and he wasn't sure what.

"Yeah that's pretty much it, except we weren't holding hands. Otherwise spot on, Pheebs."

_Why did she just lie? _Arnold furrowed his brow, wondering what on earth prevented Helga from telling the truth. _Maybe she's feeling more modest and doesn't want Phoebe to know we hooked up a second time before we technically started dating?_

It seemed odd. But Helga was smiling at him again, shrugging her shoulders as if to tell him _don't worry about it_.

"What can I say, I was at a loss for words," he collaborated with Helga, slowly speaking. "All I could handle were simple _commands_. First time jitters."

"First time?" All three of Arnold's friends asked him in unison.

"Well, yeah. I've never had a girlfriend."

Total unbelieving silence greeted him, so he felt the need to clarify. "I mean, I went one a few dates in South America but they never went anywhere. And I never asked anyone out, so...yeah, first time."

"Except you had a fiancee, Football Head." Helga socked Arnold in the arm, hard. "Don't think I forgot that."

"Ouch! Shit!" Arnold rubbed his arm, the hit throbbing right away from Helga's retributive strike. "Right. Forgot about that. But I didn't exactly _ask_ her to marry me, so much as it was mutually decided based on the _circumstances _that it would have been best to…" Arnold slowed his explanation to a stop when he saw the glares coming from Helga and Phoebe, and the incredulous look from Gerald. "...Nevermind, actually."

"Arnold," Gerald shook his head. "You're a bold kid. Bold."

"Your tendency to display at-risk behavior that courts Helga's wrath is widely documented, and extremely foolish."

"Fucking idiot Football Head."

That was a round enough drubbing for him, so Arnold shut his mouth up about _her_ and made a mental note to try to never do it again.

"Well what's next for y'all, now that the damn thing's official?" Gerald blessedly changed topics before Helga decided to revisit her choice to even out the nasty bruise on Arnold's face with a second to mirror the first.

"Next, I need lunch. Preferably something greasy and terrible for me. They still got the Chili Size here? I could go for a chili cheeseburger." Helga flipped a menu open, perusing it casually. _That was a neat dodge of that question, _Arnold thought. _Although I don't want to answer it now either._ The landscape of their future was uncertain at best, and dismally confusing at worst. The topic had not come up between he and Helga, but that didn't prevent it from being the biggest damn elephant in the smallest damn room.

"I believe Gerald was inquiring as to whether your plan was to stay in Hillwood, Arnold," Phoebe tragically finished Gerald's thought, and forced the issue.

"I'm not sure," Arnold admitted. He wasn't. There were so many variables ahead of him, and he'd only just started dating Helga a few hours ago. Something like his permanent place of residence was such an unfathomably distant decision compared to the outright tumult of this week's events. Considering things had changed hour by hour for him in the last 24 hours until he'd somehow arrived at dating Helga Pataki, where he would be _living _was the last thing on his mind.

"Let's leave it there," Helga firmly butted in. "I just fucking land the fish and you want to know how I'm gonna cook it before I've had a chance to take my trophy shot. Back off with the inquisition, Johanssen."

"Hey, I'm just askin' what everybody's thinkin'. It's been all anyone's talked about since you came back, man. Don't blame me for being the first to wanna know."

"I don't blame you, Gerald," Arnold replied. "I don't have a return ticket bought yet. Let's leave it at that."

And so they did. All four of them returned to small talk about the unexpected turn of events while busily discussing the menu and their plans for this reunion lunch. Arnold felt like he noticed Helga glancing at him from time to time in an unsettlingly distant way, but dismissed the thought as the first time jitters and a slight hangover.

Eventually, their food came, and the four of them dove in with an enthusiastic appetite that could only come from being young and victorious. Phoebe's salad (extra anchovies) stank up half the booth while Helga got chili everywhere with her burger, and Gerald and Arnold both went with their old favorite with a BLT. Everything was as it should be, Arnold felt, like their old ten year-old selves had simply picked up where the adults left off, and things could start returning to normal. It was a profoundly melancholic, nostalgic sensation that swept him up away from the table, such that he felt as if he were merely observing their victory lunch from far away.

It made noticing the little hesitations and silent glances Helga kept furtively stealing towards him impossible to gloss over. Something just didn't quite sit right.

But as his belly sat full, and his friends recounted the various ways Helga had destroyed other venues with her public shows, and how Phoebe's Valedictorian speech had put everyone asleep with a record-shattering length of four hours, and how Gerald's brief stint as an illegal radio station jockey almost landed him in federal prison, Arnold neglected to pursue the niggling inconsistencies in Helga's presence. Though wisdom and prudence would have demanded his more serious attention to this seemingly inconsequential detail, people will willingly overlook that which is abhorrent or foreign to them; so it was with Arnold, ignoring that Helga was not quite right.

After their meal had finished, and they ordered the (Arnold learned) traditional round of coffee, the four friend sat and enjoyed the fragrant beverages with idle conversation.

"And that's why I'm not allowed in Canada," Helga proudly finished her story. Gerald and Phoebe clapped appreciatively, having heard it before, but leaving Arnold to gawk at his impossible girlfriend.

"I had no idea you guys had such crazy lives while I was gone," Arnold sadly admitted. "Gerald's letters left almost all of this out."

"What you don't know about us could fill a book, Football Head. You wouldn't like it, though, it has no pictures."

"Daaaaaamn, get dunked on, Arnold!" Gerald cackled at Helga's takedown.

"Ouch, sheesh. Girlfriend of the year right here," Arnold laughed along.

"Nah I mean, seriously, things never stopped happening when you left," she continued. "In fact I think you'll find that things never stop from happening ever. We're all pretty interesting people. The gaps in our stories you might not have direct hand knowledge of doesn't mean they're not extremely rich, extremely interesting stories of their own."

"I think what Helga means is that, you've missed more than you can imagine." Phoebe clarified. "Especially the F.S. chronicle."

"Right. That." Arnold dreaded this topic. That his former fiancee had been the most villainous person in Hillwood history was not a comfortable topic for him.

"Gotta be okay talkin' about it, man, it's the biggest news since your return and it ain't going away any time soon."

"I-I know, I'm just. Tired of it."

"Same, actually," Helga butted in. "I've had a lifetime of that bullshit in the last 72 hours and I'm pretty sick of it. I had to take her ass down, unless you forget. I'm _still _pretty fucking angry."

"Helga, language," Phoebe reminded her. "I appreciate your positions, really, I do. No one has run against this foe longer than Gerald or myself, and we're fatigued from the whole ordeal as well. But, it's vital that we at the very least close the topic for discussion in the right manner."

"What's on your mind, Pheebs?" Helga emptied what was probably her fourth sugar packet into her fresh cup of coffee, Arnold noted.

"Closure. Catharsis. Finish with a big grand finale, a big bang to put the matter to rest once and for all."

"What, like a party? We just had one of those."

"Not quite a party, although celebration should definitely be part of the healing process. I was thinking more of a _retreat_."

"The beach house thing?" Helga blinked, leaning back incredulously. "You're joking, that's still on your mind?"

"Beach house?" Arnold asked the two of them, lost.

"Sorry, man, earlier this week when you got back, Phoebe and I made this three part plan to get you to stay. It was kind of underhanded, but, so far steps one and two worked like a charm."

"Three part plan? Explain."

"They just wanted you to stay, Arnold," Helga snapped, her anger seeming a little misplaced. "Don't get your knickers in a twist. The party was the biggest thing. It was all their idea. Tall Hair Boy's actually."

"You didn't have to try to _trick_ me into staying," Arnold started, feeling understandably upset that he'd been so manipulated.

"We realize that now, believe us. I learned my lesson, Helga gave me the verbal lashing of a lifetime for my underhanded tactics. I'm still trying to find ways to show proper contrition and seek forgiveness. If we offended you, I apologize sincerely."

Arnold went quiet, considering the facts. He hadn't intended on staying. That much was true. He'd intended on carrying through with his marriage to Lila, or at least seeing if it was _possible. _The dramatic note he'd written Helga was evidence enough he'd made arrangements to leave. And, thinking of what he would do in the same situation, a crazy plan to convince him to stay was _exactly _ what he would come up with. And a party and beach house were pretty benign methods, all things considering.

"Apology accepted," he shrugged, and meant it. "Don't think a thing of it any further. Tell me about this beach house idea."

Helga stared at the side of his face, and then turned back to look at Phoebe, who began to explain.

"Well originally our idea was to get everyone together at the party to show you how _different _and messy everyone has turned out to be, and appeal to your heroic qualities to intervene," she started.

"What she means is they wanted to get you to meddle." Helga corrected.

"Yes, well, that's one way of putting it. And once you saw all those different threads of everyone's particular stories, we'd hoped that a few days at the beach house with everyone would allow you time to get started on helping some of them, and it would prolong your stay. Perhaps indefinitely."

Arnold leaned back. It was a pretty good idea. Play to the best of his nature while also maybe getting their troubled friends some real help. And he had to admit, he had seen a lot that he didn't like and had made a mental note to address once he had time. He just hadn't had time yet. Until now.

"Not a bad plan, Phoebe." Arnold had to give her credit.

"Thank you. Gerald helped with the finer details, so I owe most of the brilliance to his good advice."

"Don't be modest, baby, this was almost all you."

"Well, regardless who's responsible, how does it apply _now _that Football Head knows the plan?" Helga asked the obvious question.

"Well simply put there is no plan anymore. We just think everyone could use a vacation after Lila. I know I am exhausted to my core, my wits are taxed to their limit and I have trouble focusing on my studies. I can't imagine it's any different for anyone. So I say, why not continue on, sans plan, and merely enjoy the catharsis of a summer vacation with all of our friends?"

Arnold liked the sound of that. A beach trip, with Helga. A beach house bedroom, with Helga. Bathing suits, with Helga. A sloppy, wide grin spanned the length of his face, the kind he used to have when he was ten.

"He's imagining Pataki in a thong. Kill me." Gerald pretended to gag.

"Shut your hole, Johanssen, or Betsy'll shut it for you!" Helga growled. "I look _amazing_ in a thong. You should be so lucky to catch a glimpse of this magnificent ass split by a tiny strip of black cloth."

Arnold imagined the image quite vividly, and felt himself ready to repeat last night, this morning, and the furtive stop on the way here.

"Our variety of immodest proposals notwithstanding," Phoebe cut in, "it was my intention to use the very same text thread Lila started to send out an invitation to everyone to join us at the beach house. We could use that opportunity to settle all the bruised feelings from the L.E. incident, smooth out old rivalries, and put an end to the negative drama that she stirred up with her deceits. Do you think you can procure Big Bob's consent to host that many people?"

"_Consent? _You must be confusing Big Bob for someone sane. That old miser hoards the keys to his beach house like they're The One Ring. Hasn't rented it out in years."

"Oh dear. That does complicate things."

"No it doesn't. I have a key." Helga shrugged. "Made a copy almost immediately after he bought the place. Who the fuck do you think I am? I've been going in secret for years. Brainy and I liked to take sabbaticals there to write new albums. Especially in winter. Nobody's out on the beach in the cold months. The solitude helped me write."

_She takes winter vacations to the beach to write music, _Arnold filed this new factoid away. There were so many romantic details he yearned to know, in his greed for Helga.

"Just send out your text. Tell everyone to bring their own food and booze and I'll set us up with the house. There's a cleaning service Bob hired to keep it neat and tidy we'll have to bribe to stay quiet, but, it shouldn't be a problem."

"Does that mean you're okay with the beach trip?" Arnold asked her.

"Sure. Sounds fun." Her tone was totally flat if not congenial.

"That settles that matter then. I'll start composing the invitation text right away. Thank you for being so understanding and resourceful, Helga!"

"No probs, Pheebs." Helga sipped her over-sweet coffee, and made brief eye contact with Arnold. Yet again, he saw that fleeting look of _something _that he couldn't quite identify. It suddenly struck him he was experiencing an expression in Helga's eyes that he'd never seen before, and therefore had no means to discern its meaning.

The unsettling truth was even further: he had no interest in knowing what it was. Everything would be all right, now that they were dating. The beach house trip would settle all bad blood, and there would be closure, and then they would be fine.

Everything would be just fine.

* * *

Helga found it was remarkably easy to fake being happy when you actually felt _good. _But she also found the realization that feeling good and being in pleasant, fun situations was not even close to the same thing as being happy. In fact the sad truth is that unhappiness is almost totally independent of more trivial circumstances. So when she said that the beach vacation sounded fun, she was breathlessly, completely honest, _because it did_. She had no doubt she would have fun. Fun, pleasantness, these were experiences you can have while still being devastatingly, desolately empty. People do it every day. It's not even rare.

It made the mask she wore fit so easily, she marveled at the comfort.

Of course she was no Lila. She was a _fantastic _actor and liar, no doubt, and just by being Helga she could easily distract enough away from the little things that would normally betray her empty heart. She was sure Arnold didn't notice a thing, which was really all that mattered. Phoebe would find out, eventually. She was too perceptive and fussy not to notice the slightly off way Helga laughed at Arnold's corny jokes, or the way she barely flinched whenever conversations drifted to Arnold leaving again.

But for now the coast was clear.

The four friends wrapped up their victory meal without much fuss or fanfare. Phoebe would go do her meddling, Gerald was happy to help her, and she and Arnold would...hopefully return to a bedroom soon. But otherwise, this uncertain future was pleasant, and felt good, and she was happy to fake her way through the whole ordeal.

Arnold insisted on walking her to her apartment.

"No, really, every time I let you out of my sight something terrible happens. You're stuck with me as a chauffeur for now."

Helga rolled her eyes and jammed her sharp elbow into his ribs. "Knock off the shining prince routine, hair boy. Like hell I need your scrawny cripple ass watching my back!"

Arnold mocked outrage. "_Cripple?!_ How dare you mock my limp! I'll get you just as soon as I catch up. Where is my cane?!"

Helga walked slightly quickly in response, and Arnold cursed after her and gave chase. _That's it, just, play with him. That's what he wants._

Being with Arnold was so damn fun. _This really sucks,_ she pouted inwardly. _I should be reveling in this flirty banter and horseplay. I should be eating him up._

When you know it's all a game, it spoils the playing. Even worse, she knew how it ended.

_I will break up with him at the beach house. Give him a good time, nice happy summer memories, and then let him down properly. Then he can go, guilt free. And I can try to figure out how to live._

Phoebe's catharsis vacation was her only opportunity, really. This coffin needed nails, and that would be the hammer to drive them in. Afterwards, if he stayed in Hillwood or not, it didn't matter. They would have closed the chapter on each other, and she would spend a lifetime divorced of her purpose of living. _I can do this, _she steadied herself, as they finally approached the apartment complex.

"Let me walk you in," Arnold smiled suggestively to her, one of his hands touching her hip and immediately making her warm _everywhere._

"No, that's a shitty idea. Just terrible."

"Why, afraid I'll get you in bed again?"

"I _know _you will and that's the problem. Brainy's up there. He's still cleaning up from my crazy meltdown."

"I can thank him for last night, then. I owe that guy probably a hundred beers."

"You owe Brian infinity beers, Football Head. You don't know how lucky you are he exists. If it wasn't for him, _this _would have never been possible. Which is fucked in so many ways, I can't even start telling them."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Arnold didn't ask with any anger, just confusion.

Helga sighed in frustration, exhausted from all this intense love-work and pantomime. "It means he's been putting aside _his _feelings to help _me _out since basically we reconnected in High School. The guy's been through enough this week. I don't wanna put _this _in his face, where he lives. Not yet, anyway, let me work on it."

Arnold seemed to be woolgathering. He processed what she told him carefully, but the thoughtful purse of his kissable, soft lips. _Remember what those did last night, _she thought unbidden, and flushed.

"I get it. I figured that something like that was the case. Well, i'm no jealous husband with a shotgun or anything," the word _husband _made Helga's heart skip, and then break again, "but I do have to say, if we are dating you should probably stop living with another dude that's in love with you."

He flashed her a reassuring grin. "Eventually, anyway. Brian's a good guy. I don't wanna put anything painful in his face either."

_Still a magnificent understanding angel, too good for this world, too pure. Arnold you cinnamon roll._

Helga sighed, rubbing her face with a hand. "I don't even know if you're staying here, so, I'll wait on plans to move out for now. Call me old fashioned but if I move in with my beau it's gotta be on more than a _hypothetical _promise he'll stay."

_Every word of this is a lie_. It felt like swallowing acid to speak every syllable. Even though the sentiment was true, she knew that the hypothetical scenario where Arnold stayed in Hillwood and they lived together was an impossibility.

It plainly isn't going to happen. That's not how this goes.

Arnold still chewed on what she said. "I get it. Look, I have some things to take care of at The Sunset Arms today. Why don't you call me when you want to get together again?"

Helga bit her lower lip. "What are we doing tonight?"

She felt like the roguish half-smirk Arnold slipped on was a spear through her chest. "Whatever we want. Could catch a movie, I haven't been to a movie theater in a long time. Don't have a lot of those in the jungle. Or just get coffee and talk. Or we could just do each other."

His ribald flirtation made her flush and scowl at the same time. "Horndog. You get a _little _bit of Helga Pataki and can't stop begging for more."

"Who's begging who now? Did you forget this morning?" Helga flushed harder. She hadn't. "Anyway, I don't care what we do as long as we do it together. I'm going to be counting the minutes, so, don't make me wait."

_I've lived every second of my life waiting to hear you say things like this, Arnold. _She studied his face for a beat, and felt something horrible squirm from the depths of her deepest desires, an unbidden and _deadly _yearning that escaped her before she could stop it. She watched it hit Arnold like a ton of bricks, watched him recoil, and steady himself with an invisible, internal decision she forced on him with her selfish, sudden request.

"Arnold, can you just take me away from Hillwood and marry me? Tonight?"

All of the structure and defenses she'd carefully laid out, brick by stoic brick, to affix her dead heart to this deceitful plan to free Arnold of her forever immediately tumbled down from the demolition of her selfish desires. Internally, the nightmarish chaos of her mind was essentially so turbulent as to appear smooth from a distance, with the net result of an eerie intellectual calm that belied the insanity beneath its surface. She felt absolutely outside her faculties and reason, and yet, felt herself watching his reaction in intense interest. Of course he would say no. And yet she accidentally voiced her truest desire as if she was exhaling a breath. She could no more have stopped herself from asking him than she could prevent the sun from rising. It was simply said, and all that was left was to hear his response.

Helga wasn't even aware of the passage of time as he responded.

"Let's see what tomorrow brings, Helga."

She didn't remember parting ways with him, or walking up to her apartment, unlocking the door, and letting herself in alone. She didn't recollect how she came to be seated next to Brian on the balcony, sharing an Olde English and listening to Modest Mouse's "_Heart Cooks Brain" _at incredible volume from their stereo system. One minute she was listening to the words tumble out of her mouth, the next she was sitting in morose silence trying to figure out how much time had passed between then and now.

"I think I asked _Arnold_ to _elope_," she suddenly said incredulously, handing Brainy the 40 oz. they were sharing for his turn to sip. "Why the _fuck_ did I _do_ that?"

Brainy, for his part, didn't seem to have any answers for her. He took a long drink, though, and passed it back. Helga brought it to her lips for a numbing swig, but managed to mutter, "I'm so fucking _stupid._"

"No," Brian shook his head, accepting the malt liquor back. He just held it. Somehow, he intuited that Helga was about to talk to him at length, and so ceased the habit of passing their drink back and forth to listen.

"So he took me to this nice fancy restaurant last night, and it was _really _good. Honestly I couldn't have done better in my wildest fantasies, and trust me, I've had a _few_. Then we took off and he took me to a hotel room, and I don't mind telling you, the night was something my _bones_ won't forget. And then he gets me room service breakfast, fixes the busted hotel room, takes me to lunch, and now we've got a date for tonight. Everything's _great_ right?

"_Wrong. _Everything's so fucked up, Brian. I overheard him and Lila, when I went into the house. He was telling her how he'd _done his honest best _and had _failed me_ and all this other romantic claptrap about not being able to love me. He doesn't love me. He _pities_ me, maybe. He likes to sleep with me, and k-k-kiss me, but he's just _faking _it all for my sake.

"And I'm faking it back, for his. I'm just pretending everything's fine. I agreed to be his _girlfriend_ in some twisted form of playing romantic chicken, I guess. I don't know what's wrong with me. After I heard him confess he has only platonic feelings for me, I've just been on this wretched autopilot. I feel hollow. I feel _gutted. _I've never been this...this _desolate_ in my life. Not even when he left the first time."

Helga put her head in her hands, totally unable to cry, but wishing she could. All she felt was a sort of anxious, terrible stress where her sorrow should be.

"This is _so fucked up_ but I agreed to date him with the full intention of dumping him. I can't let him fake it this much, no matter how nice it feels. I may be a selfish, fucked up person, but I can't do that to the man I love. But I'm not so fucked up I can't _dump him_ I guess. Jesus fucking Christ what's wrong with me?"

Brainy silently nudged her arm with the mouth of their Olde English bottle. She lifted her head and took it, to take a long, thirsty gulp.

He talked while she listened.

"Helga, I've been your friend for a long time. I've watched you pine after Arnold for our whole lives. I've always just sort of assumed you two would end up together somehow." Brain talked slowly, and quietly. Helga always looked him right in the eyes when he spoke like this, knowing every word was important. "You've been my best friend for years, now, too. I've helped you mourn Arnold before. I'll be here to do it again, and you know that."

Helga nodded, eyebrows knit with heartbroken affection for her friend.

"I can't tell you how to handle this. It might be that you misunderstood what he was saying or missed some context. Or maybe he's changed his mind. But if you're right, then I think you're doing the right thing. And you shouldn't beat yourself up over it. You're an amazing woman, Helga. I love you more than you'll ever know, I think. And that's why I'll help in whatever way I can with this Arnold stuff."

He offered her the rarest thing she'd ever known Brian to do in their long friendship. He smiled.

"You always have me."

_Have I been looking at the wrong man this entire time? _Helga wondered, gaping at Brian's bottomless generosity for her. She wondered if greater than her love gone out the door, was the love that she'd ignored. Studying the handsome, lean lines of his face, and the long narrow nose, and his orthodontistry-corrected perfect smile, she couldn't help but _consider _that the man she'd fallen in love with was the wrong one. She could love Brian. She _did _love Brian, in a way. He was attractive, and she would have no problem having sex with him. _Certainly _not. She was tempted to do it _right then_ but the soreness of her over-worked nethers protested at the idea far more than her conscience bothered to. She was loyal to Arnold even if their relationship was a farce.

"Brian, when Arnold leaves, do you want to try dating me?" Helga finally asked him, absolutely certain that by asking, she was breaking a tremendous barrier between them, yet very sure that she had to ask. She owed him this much. Brian looked at her for a minute, and then took the bottle from her for another long sip.

"Yeah," was how he answered her.

And so she knew her future. Arnold would have his attempt with her. She would show him it wouldn't work, and let him leave her with a clean curiosity sated and his heart untangled from her. And then, she would finally turn to Brian, who had been there for her from day one, and stare infinity in the face with someone to support her. She was certain she could learn to love him the right way. She certainly owed him the chance.

They listened to their record switch over to Side B, the clicking of their turntable punctuating the silence between the two friends as their destiny began to rush headlong towards the inevitability of _together._


	19. Chapter 19 - A Great Wanting in Common

A/N: Originally, this was going to be the Beach House chapter. But, after two scenes and they weren't even _there_ yet, and it was well into the thousands of words...so I started a new chapter.

A sprinkling of Arnold among our beloved side kids of PS 188.. We needed to address some things; and they will be addressed below. Enjoy.

Keeping Arnold - Chapter 19, A Great Wanting in Common

"I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live." - Jonathan Safran Foer

* * *

The smell of coconut has a particular rich freshness that always inevitably dragged Rhonda's thoughts to the sea like a trawling net; though she was not a mariner or particularly enamored of the ocean and its antiquated charms, she like all other Hillwoodians grew up on the coast and therefore had her memories made pregnant with the nostalgia of the tides. It brought her back to smaller, simpler times when she was almost too little to know the difference between the rich and the poor, and she merely had _friends _and could build a sandcastle in absolute freedom. She had powerful memories of her first two piece swimsuit and the agonizing choices of fashion she was presented with as a teen, and of a few summer flings with simple wharf rats and surfer boys that she couldn't remember from the shoulders down.

It was at the beach she awoke to her bisexuality, and it was at a beach that she first explored it with a summer fling, a year after Nadine had left for their misunderstandings.

Rhonda wasn't a great thinker as classical philosophers would understand, but within Rhonda Wellington-Lloyd there were depths nobody saw but herself. It was unfair to think of her as shallow, scandalous, or cruel _merely _because she was _very _good at being those things. She had a heart and feelings and all the messed up dramatic confusion that it entailed. It was her perennial privilege and curse that she she had such a conscious beauty to her that most underestimated her depth.

She longed for a meaningful relationship and connection with someone that understood her. She searched for who she was in other people, and the mirrored reflection that came back to her only focused all the sharper that shallow projection she affected. She recognized it was her own doing, for the most part, although it hadn't entirely been intentional. She _liked _fashion and cared deeply about it, and couldn't understand why anyone else _didn't._ How Helga allowed herself to be seen in the clothes she chose to pay her own money for was a puzzle Rhonda gave up trying to solve in high school. And she very much cared about who people were dating, and how their relationship was unfolding, not out of any malice (although, sometimes out of malice), but out of deeply sincere curiosity.

_How do people love one another like Helga and Arnold love one another? _It was a question she'd pondered many times in this week, and it was a question she still didn't have an answer to. She'd misjudged Arnold and Helga both for their behaviors regarding LIla. Her regrets had been plainly stated in a curt phone call to Helga, and laboriously, tearfully sobbed to Arnold in a chat in person. She truly cared for Arnold and had insisted her apology be made to his face. He accepted it graciously, and insisted she never think of her little indiscretion of faith in him again. She made that promise easily.

_I always like when I am wrong about infidelity. _Cheaters _disgusted_ Rhonda on a level that was truly genetic. Her father had his share of affairs at her mother's expense, and though her mother stoically suffered through them in heroically Wellington fashion, the memory of those indignities had never left Rhonda. It had only rankled her further still when her mother patiently, adoringly explained to her that, _Darling, every man cheats. _It was the first time she considered girls as a viable option.

Of course, now, she understood more that she had been _looking _for a reason to consider girls a viable option and her own confirmation bias had falsely suggested to her that her bisexuality had formed because _men cheat. _It wasn't until much later, as a teenager suddenly bereft of her best friend, that she allowed herself to fully explore those feelings. What she found, to her disgust, is that _women cheat too._ Not just a few of them. Every girl she'd become involved with had dishonored her.

So she stuck to Sid. Sid was stupid, Sid was easy, and Sid was convenient. Sid was also probably in love with her - or thought he was - but it didn't stop him from chasing strange whenever the opportunity arose. A Pawn Shop owner is afforded many opportunities for illicit encounters, it turns out. But his infidelities to their erstwhile on-again, off-again relationship allowed her to comfortably ignore his deeper, red feelings for her.

Which is why the figure lying in front of her, smiling over her bare shoulder expectantly at Rhonda with a "_Well? What are you waiting for?" _look in her eyes troubled her so much. _Nadine. _Here was a woman that had proven herself faithful - so far. Time would most likely make her a liar, and that inevitability drove a powerful fear into Rhonda that made her feel very little, and uncharacteristically unsure.

Rhonda was straddling Nadine's hips, rubbing coconut oil lotion into her bronzed back. Nadine wasn't wearing a top, so Rhonda could see the pretty, dramatic line of her tan stop where a bikini strap would be, and then pick up again about an quarter of an inch below. The coconut oil made her golden skin shine like fresh caramel. The smell was overwhelmingly sweet, and fresh, and it made her think of the sea, which made her nostalgic, and think about romance. And how hers had all failed.

Nadine seemed to notice the particular pause on her masseuse's face, and leaned up on her elbows slightly.

"What's up?" Her braided dreaded hair was up in a high bun, exposing the pretty, extremely fine baby hairs as soft as spun silk at the base of her hairline. Rhonda had paused, mid-massage, fleeting memories and lost regrets overwhelming her with the scent of coconut.

"Just thinking," Rhonda admitted, and attempted to resume her admittedly unskilled backrub. Rhonda was usually the one _receiving _these things, and was fairly sure she was rotten at them. Insecurity is another thing Rhonda didn't like. Nadine seemed to make her more and more insecure all the time.

"About?" Nadine patiently smiled and laid back down, resting her face on her crossed arms in front of her.

"Beaches, actually." Rhonda paused her slow rub of Nadine's wonderfully muscled back and shoulders. "Am I shallow?"

"Mmmm, marvelously so." Nadine laughed at her own jab.

"I'm serious, actually, Nadine." Her tone communicated that her joke was not appreciated.

"My _goodness_," Nadine breathed through her nose hard. "What's got you so insecure suddenly?"

"The smell of coconut. Are you going to answer me seriously?"

Nadine propped herself up again and turned her torso halfway to face Rhonda more clearly. Her skin creased like peanut butter folding against itself. "Rhonda, we don't have a of time together left before I go back. Are you sure you want to explore this line of thought with me?"

"What's _that_ supposed to mean? Of course I do. You're...my best friend. Who else but Nadine can I discuss this with?"

"Best friend? You were shouting otherwise when I had my mouth on you last night."

_True, she got quite a bit out of me, _Rhonda blushed to remember. She'd had girlfriends, but never really...gone all the way with them before. Nadine was full of firsts for her.

"Do not get vulgar with me when I ask you a serious question about the jewel of my personality." Rhonda firmly planted an oil-slick hand on Nadine's head and pushed it forcefully back onto her arms. "Now lay down, and answer me."

Nadine huffed a sigh while Rhonda's hands returned to clumsily rubbing her back. "How do you expect me to even answer that?"

"A yes or no would suffice."

"Then, I guess, yes. You are pretty shallow. But I don't think it's necessarily a _bad _thing."

Rhonda paused. She did not like that answer. "Explain."

"Aw geez don't get mad. You basically forced the issue."

Rhonda snorted. "I'm not mad. I want you to explain your answer to me. Please."

Nadine paused for a longer time than Rhonda was prepared to wait. She finally responded.

"I think, for better or for worse, you have _Rhonda _on the mind more than you have anyone else. I think you always have. I left for a _few _reasons but one of them was definitely how _dense _you are about other people's feelings."

"I know how other people feel, usually, I just don't see the need to take it into consideration most of the time."

"Exactly my point. I don't think you are intentionally cruel, but gosh you were certainly inconsiderate. I felt taken for granted for a long time. It took my own independent success as a photographer out on my own to feel like I had worth _without _you there to tell me so."

Rhonda had stopped rubbing again. "I did that to you?"

"Why do you think I was so bitterly angry at you?"

"Rejection."

Nadine scoffed again, and sighed a long, slightly bittersweet sigh. "Oh I definitely felt rejected by you. We were best friends and I confessed feeling far more than that, and you didn't reciprocate. Or _couldn't_, or whatever it is you believe now. But more than anything I felt, I dunno, _betrayed _by how little you seemed to regard my desolation by your rejection. It seemed to matter to you so little."

"Nadine, I couldn't control how you felt about me. And at the _time, _I couldn't return your feelings. Logically, what could I have even done for you? Continue to lead you on with comfort? Would that have been better?"

Nadine seemed to be getting frustrated now, and leaned herself up on her arms. "Tell me why you brought this up during my sexy back rub again? We already apologized to each other for the past, and it feels like you want me to feel bad that you had to apologize at all."

Rhonda slipped off Nadine's back and stood beside the bed, her arms crossed.

"I just asked if you thought I was shallow and you launched into your rehash of the past like some kind of intrepid psychonaut. You brought it up, not me."

Nadine swiveled to sit up, her bare chest covered with an arm. It's funny how our chaste instincts kick in when we are uncomfortable, even when we are with someone that we have been deeply intimate with.

"You're right, I did, but as an _example_ of how your shallowness has hurt people around you before. But I still have feelings for you, shallowness and _all. _Don't make this another fight."

Rhonda wanted to fight for some reason. She wanted to escalate this past forgiveness and tear away from the promise of intimacy and exposure. The instinct was very strong to cut that closeness off and flee.

"Very well," she finally responded. She wouldn't run this time. Nadine was finally back in her life, and it felt too good to chase away. "But if we are going to be _anything, _friends or lovers or something in between, I think we need to work this out."

"Okay fine. I can agree to that."

Rhonda felt terribly awkward standing with oiled hands in front of her topless former best friend for a brief moment, a wholly unwelcome sensation she immediately disregarded as best she could.

"I think perhaps we rushed into our _reconciliation_ a bit prematurely," Rhonda sighed, looking at the glisten of the oil on her slender hands. "There's still so much to discuss."

"Oh babe, I just _wanted _you. From when I saw you at the door I just had to have you. I had all kinds of speeches planned for this, but they all kind of fell out of my head when I saw you again. If we rushed anything it's because we both needed each other."

"You think I need you?" Rhonda slipped upwards one of the sliver-thin eyebrows on her pretty sloping oval-shaped forehead.

Nadine laughed and reached for her bra, standing up and turning away while she snapped it into place. Apparently the back rub was over. "I think you needed _someone _that wasn't Sid. Poor boy. Maybe I fit the bill. I'd like to."

"I think if we...consider this to be more than a passing fling of long-built passions, we ought to get some things out of the way. Primarily, Rhonda Wellington-Lloyd doesn't need _anyone._"

Nadine just looked at her, her expression unimpressed. "Really, princess? Because from where I stood, you were just fine getting my help and emotional support when the chips were down."

"You're a beloved friend, returned to me at last. Of course I enjoyed the support you volunteered. But I didn't _ask _for it."

"Unbelievable," Nadine snorted, throwing her hands up. "I knew coming back to Hillwood was a mistake. You're not serious about trying to reconcile with me, much less try to _date_. How am I supposed to accept that your apology was sincere when you act like this?"

"I do everything with sincerity, especially _lie. _But I didn't deceive you; I truly really am quite sorry for the barbaric way I treated your bravery in coming out to me, and I handled your confession to me with even more barbarism. I was unforgivably violent to your friendship, and it remains my largest regret aside from what happened to Eugene. If you think my _perspective _on these events is questionable, that's fine, but don't you dare question the honesty of my very real protestation at your mercies, _Nadine."_

Rhonda completed her rather barbed response with a quick turn in her bare heel. She stomped with physical anger to the front door of the hotel room, slipping her long narrow feet into the flats she'd worn that day (black, with gold bows on the toes).

"Rhonda, wait," Nadine pleaded. Rhonda snorted a laugh of derision, shrugging her slender shoulders.

"Talk fast, because I give second chances only rarely. Third chances are _unheard of._"

"It's your phone," she held up Rhonda's iPhone, which was lit with a screen notification of some kind. "Uh. And mine?" She held up her own phone, showing a similar state. "We just got a group notification."

Rhonda immediately closed the distance in three neat strides. Her iPhone was snatched from Nadine's grasp, the toxicity of their conversation immediately forgotten. For notable, singular reasons, group texts had become something that Rhonda needs must devote her entire focus of attention towards.

She deflated into relief when she saw it was just from Phoebe. Specifically, it was a rather long-winded invitation to spend five days at the Pataki beach house, all on the Pataki tab. It even came with a well-framed little picture of the three story building in question. "Nadine, remind me to very firmly and very politely tell Phoebe never to send mass texts to everyone again."

Nadine scoffed audibly. "No kidding. Looks like it's an event invite. Girl, hasn't she heard of Facebook?"

Rhonda couldn't help be smile a tiny bit, even if she was still determined to be quite put out and insulted by Nadine. "I think Phoebe still uses her Livejournal," Rhonda snickered. "But regardless, the girl has her heart in the right place. While I spend plenty of time in the sun, a few days unwinding at the beach _does_ sound divine. Let's see who the roster includes."

Rhonda scrolled through the list of contacts that Phoebe had sent her little invitation.

She discarded her phone on the bed. "Oh, just everyone from PS118 and a few others. _Marvelous._ Another reunion is _just_ what this town needs."

"Sarcasm has always sounded good on you," Nadine teased. "But I actually think it's a good idea."

"You _do?"_

"Yeah. I mean, we all just went through some pretty heavy stuff. I think we could use a break. Maybe settle bad blood while we're at it. Nothing helps put grievances aside like getting day drunk on margaritas together."

Rhonda's thin lips pursed. "You have a compelling argument, Nadine. But don't forget, we're quarrelling right now. A reunion hardly did anything to help our problems."

"That's because you're stubborn, selfish, insensitive, and kind of clueless when it comes to other people's feelings. But I'm a rough, tactless busybody with no sense of subtlety. We can, I dunno. Try to work on that?"

A warm affection bled itself through Rhonda. Nadine still had that old magic charm that disarmed her. Allowing her emotions to bubble over, she extended her arms to grasp Nadine around the shoulders, hugging her loosely. Nadine wasn't having any of this loose, distant hugging crap, so she hauled Rhonda's slip of a body against her own and squeezed her tight, chest to chest. Their sternums touched, and Rhonda could feel the excited way Nadine's heart skipped and trilled against her.

At last, they separated.

"What if..._we_ don't work?"

"I won't lie, my experience dating girls has been one hundred percent unsuccessful." Nadine grinned. "But I don't know any other way. And if you can handle being with a bug photographer, I'll take good care of you, baby."

"That didn't answer my question."

"Look," Nadine sighed, squeezing her waist. "If there's something about being my girlfriend that doesn't work for you, this beach trip will tell us that. But I've been in love with you for a long, _long_ time. But first you were my best friend. That won't change."

"I think you underestimate breaking up with Rhonda Wellington-Lloyd, at your peril."

"Are you kidding me? I watched you fold teenage boys in half like a saltine cracker more times than I can count. I know how you do breakups. If we don't work, we can just...make a clean break by me leaving town."

"Dear, you're being naive. Friendship after being lovers, it doesn't work. It's not something I can do."

Nadine chewed her lip pensively. "Okay...okay, well. I have to try?" Something desperate was in Nadine's voice. It touched Rhonda deeply.

"Well," Rhonda sighed, separating and plucking up her phone. "We've gone much too far to stop now. I'll RSVP the both of us. One room. We'll pack my shallowness and insensitivity and your brusque carelessness and try to make the most of the beach together."

Nadine smiled wide.

"But," Rhonda completed replying to the group text with her responded intention to attend, "if this doesn't work, you fly back home, and that's that. I don't think we should talk afterwards."

The two women stared long and hard at each other, examining one another for some sense of truth, some hidden invisible means to decode the other. Rhonda knew that Nadine made her the best she could be, but she also knew the worst came out of her when they were together. And yet, something else tugged her in Nadine's direction, a morbid sense of finality that called to her blood.

"Deal." Nadine stuck out her hand for a handshake. Rhonda was struck by the disarming gesture.

"I've never begun a romantic entanglement by means of handshake, but I suppose in the circumstances it will suffice." She placed her dainty hand in Nadine's, and squeezed the fingers while shaking. "Don't make me regret this," she warned.

"Don't worry," Nadine smiled. "I intend to take you home with me and never look back."

Rhonda had to admit, if the beach trip went well, that sounded just fine with her.

* * *

Eugene hummed along to a _Hamilton_ song while he stocked trick cards and sleeve-mounted flowers, completely absent from both his singing and the business of the magic shop and totally lost in the preoccupation of fantasy.

_It sure is nice that Helga and Arnold worked things out, _Eugene mused, recognizing the goodness and relief in that statement but having no emotional connection to it. In fact, Eugene was completely hollow, tip to toe, and had been for the better part of two years.

He smiled and made small talk and chit chat with a customer, a young magician aspirant with a penchant for lighter fluid, and completed sales, and in general was a model employee of The Amazing Dan's Magic Shop and Illusion Emporium. Once the customer was gone, he was alone again in the shop, cleaning and making the stock presentable, and only knocking things off shelves about thirty percent of the time. Not a bad record for Eugene.

A familiar shuffle of aged feet told him that Dan - real name Lewis Feinstein - was out of the back office where he spent most of his day napping, and was on his way to the front.

"Eugene my boy, I found the perfect part for you," the old man wheezed. A bad lung made his voice sound wet and raspy when he talked. A lifetime of chomping cigars and drinking cheap brown liquor gave him a rich and low timbre of voice that crooked his Jersey accent into pleasant territory.

Dan made the turn around a corner, and all five feet of him - standing shorter than Eugene, even - appeared. His face looked like an old pale pumpkin left to rot, caved in and sagging in deep lines along his chin, eyes, and forehead. His chin had a downy white fuzz like an orange gon to molding, and an almost toothless smile creased his old face more often than not. Three prominent conical groupings of wispy white hair stuck out from his liver-spotted bald head in odd angles. He slicked them up to appear more "fantastical," his words. Even in his retirement and dotage, he still wore the tailed tux jacket, flapping dickie, trick suspenders, and over-sized hoop-waisted black trousers of his magical career. If he ever donned face paint, he would make a convincing clown.

Lewis Feinstein was a relic of a bygone era of stage performance and magic that had its heydey in the manic economic boom of the post-war American obsession with _gaiety. _Where illusions had the gravitas and theatrical seriousness of a Wagnerian opera around the turn of the century, by the time that Lewis Feinstein had adopted the name _The Amazing Lewis_ in 1959 at the age of 15, magicians were firmly vaudevillian and camp. His act consisted largely of appearing to be unable to complete any of his illusions without bumbling, and he would exaggeratedly reach into his oversized, wobbling trousers, pull out of a massive, weighty-looking tome ominously scrawled with the title _The Trick to Magic,_ and feign bemused frustration while he thumbed through the volume looking for the secret of whatever particular magic trick he'd faked his failure. It was pretty funny.

Eugene met Lewis, or Dan, when he had just had his life ruined by the overwhelming attacks of a theater community _outraged_ that some scheming underaged _twink_ like Eugene had attempted to sully the good name of one of their community darlings by outing a supposed affair. Of course, the reality was, Eugene never outed anything, it was all Rhonda and Fuzzy Slippers. And what's more, the affair was all too real, and Eugene's biggest regret. Nevermind that a man ten years his senior had involved himself with student that was only just barely old enough to consenting age, behind his wife's back, on school property. _For a month._ The sad truth was, the story was easier to blame the victim, and Eugene's luck had finally, finally run out.

His promising future as a local theater actor ended overnight. His dreams died with the last vestiges of his reputation among the many powerful people his former teacher, then lover, was connected to. It was just one sad story without a happy ending, just one like any other, and Eugene was fine with his life coming to an abrupt, anticlimactic end. It fit. His whole life, he'd been a bumbling, clumsy mess, prone to self-injury and getting in his own way, and too optimistic for his own good.

Those days were over. Now, he worked in the magic shop, kept Lewis company, and occasionally made it to a party that Rhonda invited him to out of an overwhelming burden of guilt. He'd watch plays and _yearn,_ and he'd sing musicals to himself when he was alone, but he'd never look out onto the faces in the darkness of a theater audience again.

Which is why when Dan shuffled his way to the counter and slapped a casting call leaflet in front of Eugene - probably for the hundredth time since he got this job - he was more than just a little weary.

"My boy, this will be the one that gets you out there," Dan insisted with one gnarled finger held pointed at Eugene for emphasis. "No more moping about and making my store a gloomy cave. This part's perfect - it's got rap!"

"Rap?" Eugene wrinkled his freckled nose, unfolding his arms to lift up the casting call. _Hamilton._ He was just humming that earlier. "Oh, no, Lewis-"

"Call me Dan," he commanded. It was a shop rule. Stage names only in the shop.

"Dan, this is _Hamilton._ I can't audition for this even if I wanted to, local theater or anythng."

"Why not? You got the pipes! And rap's what all the young kids like you are about these days, right?"

Dan's only distant understanding of what the young kids were about these days was one of his more wearying charms.

"Well, Dan, I can't audition for any part but King George. And that always goes to someone with a long stage career."

"Why not? Audition for Hamilton, hell, for Burr! You got the chops, kid!"

"Dan, it's an all persons of color play."

"A play for coloreds?" Dan blinked with absolute bewilderment. "No, no that can't be right, we ended Jim Crow in the sixties!"

Eugene sighed, desperately certain he didn't want to explain the nuances of intersectional race politics and representation in theater to Dan today. Lewis was by no means a prejudiced man. He embraced Eugene into his employ like a father figure, and barely blinked when Eugene told him he was gay. _"What, like Liberache? Now there was a stage performer,"_ he'd immediately answered, and that was all there was to say on the matter. But for a man who'd lived long enough to have living memory of when he couldn't share a drinking fountain with his neighbors, Lewis had to have things explained a little more patiently than most. Eugene just didn't have the energy to do it today.

"Thank you for the flier. I'll think about it," he lied.

"Good! You should. You know, my Mary, she loved historical plays like _Julius Caesar,_ I bet she'd love this Hamilton."

"I bet she would," Eugene assented, knowing he was strapping in for one of Dan's daily allotment of three to five diatribes about his wife. A widower of some ten years, Dan was more than prone to waxing nostalgic about his wife.

"You don't see girls like Mary these days," he said, proudly unfolding an ancient, wrinkled brown wallet from his trousers and pulling a yellowed black and white full body photograph of his wife in her 20's. She was in her magician's assistant attire, skimpy bloomers and everything. "The legs on that woman still haven't stopped to this day," he chuckled, staring with dewy eyes at her picture, and touching the frayed and dog-eared edges with a tender finger. Mary and Dan had been touring magicians together for years. Then Mary fell pregnant. Dan immediately ended the touring life, got a small loan to open a brick-and-mortar magic shop to make a living off his travels and experience in the business, and they settled down. Mary miscarried. They remained childless, but deliriously in love, until Mary passed away of heart failure in the late 90's.

Eugene couldn't fathom the kind of love Lewis felt for his wife. If was her idea he change his stage name to "The Amazing Dan," banking that the popularity of _Dapper Dan_ products would carry more weight than his too-Jewish sounding name of _Lewis Feinstein._ Though she was a gentile, Mary was not unsympathetic to the long, long history of Jewish names being erased or changed to be more appealing to the gentile masses, but, Lewis loved his wife to blind obedience, and made the change without much fuss. It turned out to be a good career move, ironically.

It was that kind of trust that he imagined Helga and Arnold must have felt for each other during the Fuzzy Slippers ordeal earlier that week. _What a mess that was,_ he thought. _At least they caught Lila._

He felt no level of celebration. It was not a victory for him, because he'd already suffered ultimate defeat. He felt no sense of justice had been done, because his life was still ruined, and he still had no hope to pin a dream on. That was precisely the reason he'd been ignoring Phoebe's texts about this beach house vacation. He had to admit, it would probably be fun to goof off with his friends one last time, but, there would be no cathartic release or reunion for the hapless young man, and he'd rather not have to face the very people that had contributed, some more directly than others, to his current state of affairs. He'd only gone to the party because Gerald had been so convincing, and he wanted to do a good thing by Arnold. But that was already done. The good guy got the girl. The bad girl was punished. Story over.

He wasn't going to be in the epilogue. He was a side character, relegated to background movements with enough life to avoid seeming like a mannequin, but not too distracting to the eye.

The jingle of the front door brought Eugene's attention away from Dan's still-continuing poetic remembrance of his wife, up to the entrance. Like a leonine sun god, Arnold tall and tan, pushed through the displays towards the counter, a wide calm smile on his face.

"Hey, Arnold," Eugene smiled. "What brings you to the shop?"

"Hey, Eugene. You, actually," he started cautiously. Arnold finally settled to lean on the counter, smiling politely at Dan. "Hello, you must be the Amazing Dan. I've heard a lot of amazing things about you, sir."

Dan puffed up his hunched posture and an adoring twinkle of pride lit his expression up. "Oh, I'm sure this kid talks big on my account, but don't be fooled. I'm just an old hack," he chuckled, full of false modesty. It wasn't often that young men came to flatter his legend.

Eugene watched in wonder as Arnold chatted up Dan as if they'd been friends their whole lives or more. Arnold never ceased amazing him, both in the ways he'd grown to become such a profound man, but also, in the ways he was so lovable as a kid had never changed.

Arnold finally turned to Eugene after entertaining Dan's curiosity enough to send the old illusionist off to his back office, satisfied. "So, Phoebe tells me you haven't answered her invitation."

"Ah, no, I haven't yet. Did she send you to get me to come for something?"

"No, nobody sent me. I came on my own, because I really wanted you to come."

Eugene frowned, feeling a small pain in his tiny birdcage chest. "Why on earth would you want me to come ruin everyone's good time?"

Arnold seemed to be legitimately taken aback by the strength of that sour query. "I don't think you'd ruin anyone's good time, buddy. What's, I mean-"

"Rhonda, for one," Eugene lifted his hand to begin listing names, counting his fingers off. "Phoebe and Gerald, two more, for feeling guilty for not being able to help me fast enough, Sheena, for bailing on me, there's four. Should I keep going?"

Arnold just looked at Eugene in that painfully pitying way that he'd become so bitter of seeing on formerly friendly faces.

"Really, I appreciate the invitation, and it's nice of you guys to want to include me. But, let's be realistic, here, Arnold," Eugene heard his voice becoming more and more bitter, his patience wearing thinner and thinner. "Nobody wants a sadsack around to rain on the parade, and I just don't have it in me to pretend that everything's fine anymore."

Arnold seemed like he had no answer to that for a time. Eugene was about to send him away, when Arnold finally responded.

"You know, I've spent most of my teenage and young adult life being unable to make a difference in a large, meaningful way, in the places that need the most help."

Eugene didn't answer, only fell into a patient silence to listen.

"The Green Eye Tribe, they've been mostly left alone since we all worked so hard to save their lands, but, there's countless indigenous tribes that it's too late for. Or even outside of indigenous people, the tribal and racial minorities that modern life has swallowed whole, and set aside to be forgotten. Even here, in this country, in Hillwood, even, I just see nothing but the wealthy and powerful doing everything they can to squeeze the life out of the little guys.

"I've decided, since I left South America, my parents made the choice to leave their homes behind and try to save the world, just the two of them. And they're very noble for it, and I respect their sense of purpose and drive. And I'm planning on going back to finish a few things there, but, my life isn't being a globetrotting justice fighter and revolutionary. It should be devoted to helping the people I love that I left behind.

"Eugene, I know that what happened to you was...terrible. Probably the worst thing LIla ever did. I'll never forgive her for all her crimes but yours, might be the one that I hate her for the most. And I'm so, so sorry I wasn't there to help when you needed it. But I'm here, right now, in your magic shop, basically begging you to come to the beach house.

"Maybe I can't fix your life, but I know for sure I can't sit aside and watch as one of my closest childhood friends just withers away like this. Please come."

Eugene had watched Arnold during his monologue, unconsciously shedding tears slowly while his friend reached out to him. How he'd missed Arnold's lovely, pure-hearted speeches. And how sorely he'd needed them when his life got turned upside down. He hurriedly pushed the streaky tears off his freckles cherubic cheeks and smiled awkwardly, sniffing his big nose.

"Aw, shucks, Arnold, you got me all weepy."

"Yeah," Arnold sighed. "I seem to be really good at making the people I care about cry. I'm sorry."

"Ah, don't be. It's been awhile since I had a good cry. A _good_ cry, anyway. I guess...I guess it won't kill me to come along. I don't possibly know how things could get fixed, but, I can't say no to you. Especially not when you're being so heroically earnest as always."

"I don't know what I can really do to help you, but, I'm here for you, always. I know I was gone for a long time...unforgivably long, for some. But I'm here now."

"Will you be staying then? Now that you and Helga are together?"

"Probably. We haven't really discussed it, actually. I'm waiting until the beach trip to really discuss our future...everything is just so new, I can't imagine trying to tackle that problem yet."

"I'm happy for you, Arnold, I am. If there were any two people that were made for each other, it's you two. But forgive me if I am a little salty from time to time."

"I totally understand. We can be a bit...much. I'm planning on keeping it dialed back at the trip, so don't worry."

"No big dramatic speeches planned?"

"Who do you think you're talking to? I'm Arnold Shortman, there's _going_ to be a big speech."

The two friends shared a laugh, and Eugene felt like it was maybe the second time he'd felt genuinely good in a long time. The other time was at the party where his friends reconnected. _Maybe I'm not as hopelessly bitter as I thought, if I can feel good about them._ It was a hungry, comforting thought.

"Okay, I'll come." Eugene finally agreed, and listened to Arnold rave about the good time he was sure to have with a jovial smile on an otherwise empty expression.

_I'll just have to see if my luck will turn around this time, _he thought, absolutely certain that it never would.

* * *

Thad hung up with his investment broker, confident that his assets would be put to good use while he was gone. It wouldn't do to have an untrained hand mucking his hard work up with clumsy ideas and inconsistent purpose; he had a specific design for the fortune he'd made and it would require a specific touch.

Of course, the last final piece of his plan required perhaps the most difficult part.

His time as a day trader and market personality had made him what most Hillwoodians would call "monstrously rich," but Thad knew that his youth and inexperience had him parked squarely in the bush leagues of getting wealthy. Still, he'd made his first cool million before his 18th birthday, and what kid doesn't love that kind of scratch?

And yet nothing he accomplished seemed to be good enough for her. Or for _any_ of them for that matter. His embarrassing outburst at the party had been a side effect of his social anxiety, his therapist had told him. He paid his therapist good money to tell him things like that, so he tended to err on the side of the experts. His aggressive braggadocious behavior was a natural cause of his insecurities stemming from a lifetime of being, well, _looked over._

But he was confident that this time, _this time,_ nobody could ignore him. After all, he was putting so much at stake, so much on the line, only a fool would blame him of selfishness. And if he happened to get Rhonda's attention finally, well, he was just fine with that.

Of course he'd RSVP'd to the beach party house with the utmost seriousness and haste.

He had so much work to do, and Arnold was the key to it all. It would be at this party he announced his intentions, and gambled every accomplishment he'd ever made on this wild new destiny.

It had to pay off, because there was no plan B. His various hired financial advisors had helped him see to that, grumbling the entire way that it was an especially foolish way to protect his investments. No matter, he'd discarded their flimsy recommendations the same way he'd discarded every last artifact of the life he no longer believed in, and no longer wanted.

She'd notice him this time. She'd see him for who he really, really was. And Arnold would help him.

_That's what Arnold does, he helps people._ Thad closed this third bank account with the stroke of a finger on his smartphone, transferring the funds to a dummy account he'd set up for this specific purpose. _And soon, that's what I'll be doing, too._

* * *

"Hey fuck you, pal!" Harold clenched a meaty fist and shook it angrily at the snob that had kicked his change can down the sidewalk in a fit of spite.

"Grab the fucking quarters, Harry," Patty urged, on her hands and knees in an instant to grab the scattered change. "I got his face, we'll pound his ass later."

Harold stood with his body squared off with the stranger who had taken off into a full sprint away from them, an empty rage and hurt in his big heart. _Why's everybody gotta always pick on us?_ He didn't understand it. He'd never known such baseless, empty cruelty against him as when he lived in the streets.

People find it easiest to kick a dog when it's down, and there's no dog downer than a person living on the street.

"Babe, hurry the fuck up!" Patty's voice betrayed the panic she felt. This wasn't a joke, this was their meal and shelter she was fighting for. Harold turned and started to help her gather up the some twenty dollars in loose change and crumpled dirty bills they'd spanged that day. Spanging, or "spare change-ing" was exactly what it sounded like; begging for money on the sidewalk or street corners from anyone that passed. It was brutal, soul-crushing work, and left them both an exhausted, furious mess at the end of the day when they had to try to find a cheap room somewhere.

Hillwood's homeless shelter was always too crowded, and people stole, and Harold heard the women could get attacked in the dark. He glanced up at the generous, plump lips on Patty's scowling face, and then down to the huge swell of her cleavage in her ratty, beat up shirt. _I can't take her there,_ he worried.

Two shiny black shoes stepped into Harold's view, smallish, and neat like the back of a beetle. A long shadow blocked the sun directly in front of Harold, so he looked up into the direction the stranger was standing in, ready to fight. He had to squint and cover his eyes from the halo of sunlight that wreathed the suited man. _This better not be a goddamn Jehova's witness,_ Harold scowled, and stood up.

"Listen, buddy, we just had some asshole kick our can down the street and I'm ready to fuck someone up, so unless you want to see what my fist tastes like beat it," an indescribably exhausted Herald leveled his very serious threat.

"Ach, Harold, this street living has done terrors to the way you talk," a familiar voice replied. Harold's vision adjusted, and he recognized the man. His old Rabbi.

"Oh, it's just you Rabbi Steve," he sighed. No danger, no violence. He stooped to pick up their kicked can, and Patty was silently, angrily filling it with their recovered funds when Rabbi Steve offered to help her up.

"Ma'am, you'll get your knees all scuffed up by the sidewalk if you kneel like that, come, stand up," he offered, and pulled her to her full, intimidating five feet and ten inch height.

"_Ouf,_ big one, aren't you? Harold this must be your Patty," the bearded, skinny man said.

"Yeah, I'm Patty. What kind of name is Steve for a Rabbi, anyway?" Patty was dusting her knees and calves off of road dirt, looking skeptically at the man. Harold watched her, a sick sort of worry still clinging in his guts.

"Would you prefer _Shimon_ or _Levi_, perhaps? My mother was a fan of Steve McQueen, young lady. She said she wanted me to have a chance at being handsome, and with my face, I needed more than just a good name!"

Harold crossed his arms over his chest. "What do you want, Rabbi Steve?"

"Harold," the patient man began. "Don't you think it's time you went home, to your mother and father? Or come to temple?"

Patty drew close to Harold, encircling one of his arms protectively, like a guardian statue. She was taller than Harold, and easily the stronger of the two. She had been a wrestler in high school before all the Fuzzy Slippers mess wrecked their lives.

"No, Rabbi Steve, I don't think it's time for any of that. I think it's time for you to go!" Harold looked at Patty at his side for support, and found her totally behind his decision. The two of them were a unit; they came together or not at all. They'd survived hell, and worse, and had a fierce loyalty to the hard times they'd been through together; Harold loved Patty, with all his body and soul, and there wasn't anyone anywhere that would separate them. Not even his family. Not even his faith.

"Alright, mister tough guy, talk so tough to your Rabbi and to cruel strangers that kick your begging can. Stay in the cold for a few more nights, but you have to consider Patty's condition."

"Condition?" Harold asked with genuine confusion.

"_Yeah, Rabbi Steve, what condition?_" He felt Patty's strong grip tighten around his arm, and felt her begin to shake with anger next to him. "_Go ahead, why don't you enlighten us?"_

The bespectacled man looked between the two young lovers, knowingly. A sort of strange look passed between him and Patty that Harold did not understand.

"He doesn't know?"

"You shut your mouth right now or I'll make you sorry," Patty threatened. Harold definitely didn't understand what was going on.

"He'll come to know sooner than later, young lady. When he does, you two come have a warm bed and a hot meal in my home."

Harold _yearned_ for a warm bed, and a hot meal. He and Patty hadn't had that kind of luxury in months. Their last living situation with the rest of their crust punk friends had violently come to an end - as these things quite often do - when someone made a pass at Patty, and then someone _else_ made a pass at Harold, and then words no longer could decide the situation peacefully.

But Harold had made his decision; he wouldn't abide any destiny that meant he and Patty had to separate. It just wasn't an option, no matter how tempting or attractive.

"Thanks but no thanks Rabbi Steve. You get along now, don't bother us no more."

"Harold," the holy man sighed. "You think you're the first Jew to quarrel with his mother over a gentile woman? Please, listen to reason, it's not too late to fix things. It's never too late."

"For us it is," Patty snarled. "You don't know what our families did, and you don't know us. Get the fuck along now."

The Rabbi looked at them both from over his spectacles, and then finally threw his arms up in defeat. Turning to walk away, he called back to them.

"Soon, you won't be making this choice for the two of you anymore. Don't forget."

Harold stared at his Rabbi's back with a kind of lost, forlorn confusion that brought his mind to a standstill. It made him want to get blind drunk, and get into fights, and kiss Patty. Patty released her white-knuckled grip off Harold's arm and slowly retured to her spot in the shaded area of sidewalk, putting her face in her hands. Harold looked down at her, wondering what the hell his Rabbi meant, and what he was going to do about their future.

"What did Rabbi Steve mean?"

"I don't know, nothing. He's a Rabbi, they talk like idiots," Patty grumbled. "Can we just go get a room and get some sleep now? I think we have enough if we skip a meal.

"Augh, but I'm so _hungry_," Harold whined. Even months of emaciation from hunger hadn't dulled his appetite.

"I know you are, baby, but, I'm just tired. Please." Patty looked up at him with those eyes that said, _You're doing this,_ and he fell into line. He loved Patty. He'd do anything she asked.

The two of them hoisted their backpacks, helping each other with the heavy straps and finding their balance. They carried all their worldly possessions in two camping backpacks, stuffed to almost bursting. They wore whatever they could clean, and waited until their clothes were nearly rotten before trying to wash them in a washateria. They made do with whatever they could, and they loved each other fiercely, and they kept together, no matter what.

Partners.

They walked in silence to the typical motel they could grab for twelve bucks, hoping there were vacancies. Harold wondered if he could convince Patty to spring for the cable upgrade - one dollar - or if they should just save it up for the next day, and try to get ahead.

Silent travel kept his brain moving.

Memories of the previous week's insane party slowly boiled into his awareness. _Man, that was so much fun. I can't believe Patty decked that piece of shit Thad._ The memory warmed his heart more than any hot meal could have in that moment. Well, except maybe a meat lover's deep pan pizza. Or fried chicken. Or…

"That party sure was somethin'," Patty mused.

"Yeah," he agreed, keeping his eyes on his boots while he walked.

"I'm glad those two kids finally got their shit together. Helga's a real sweet girl once you get her to stop bullying you," Patty snickered. She was clearly trying to cheer Harold up. A day of abuses and bad encounters had worn on his morale, and he wore his disappointment and anger and hunger on his face like a mime wore paint.

"Yeah, good for Arnold," Harold agreed.

"You know," she slowly started. "I heard they're doing something at the beach this week. Like, a get-together."

"Oh, cool," Harold looked up. "You think we could come?"

"Yeah I bet we could. I wonder if they've been trying to get ahold of us."

Neither of their cell phones were paid for.

"Well, the beach is a public place, and it's a free country," Harold scowled. "Let 'em try and stop us."

"You think we should crash their party, huh, babe?" Patty smiled at him, nudging him with a strong elbow.

"Yeah! Fuck 'em. We'll show them how punks party for real this time."

Patty smiled wider at that, looking down and away. Silence settled between them again. Being together for so long, sometimes their silences spoke more than their words did. Harold watched his lover, his soulmate, his partner, crossing the street in a hurry while a car intentionally swerved to try to clip her. It missed her by an inch. His mad dash across the same intersection was no better.

He tried to imagine what their silence was saying now.

_I think I know what Rabbi Steve was talking about._

_I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner._

_It's okay, this is scary to me, too. But I'm also happy._

_I think we should try to fix things with our families._

_It would mean we have to stay apart, I can't let that happen._

_It's not about us anymore._

_It's always about us._

_I love you._

_I love you, too._

Harold waited at the vending machine, staring at the blue glow of various sugary drinks, and each of their prices. Patty was negotiating with the motel owner, counting out their change, and getting the room key. They were lucky; there was a room tonight.

Their bags were stowed in the far corner of the room, tossed down and unpacked for their baggied toiletries and Patty's feminine hygiene products. They were doing okay on supplies, but would have to get a job soon. The relief when they were able to finally strip down and get in the shower together was palpable.

Harold and Patty touched each other the way two trauma victims spoke of their shared experiences. The way they made love in the bed they'd managed to secure for the night was as desperate as if it was guaranteed to be their last. That's how it always was with them. That's how Harold loved Patty, and how she loved him.

They retired to curl up under the shitty, probably dirty blanket that the motel had furnished the room with a palpable grudge. Patty preferred to be the big spoon, so Harold felt her start to snore against the back of his head before he was sure she was asleep. It took all his limited finesse to pluck her hand off his belly, and slip it behind him quietly and without waking her. He rolled onto his hips, and then fell onto his feet off the edge of the rickey bed.

He crept into the bathroom, and found one of her baggies with all her girl hygiene stuff in it, feeling like his pulse was in his throat. He looked over his shoulder as he peeled open the targeted plastic bag, and fished around until he found the much sought-after item.

A pregnancy test.

It was positive.

* * *

Sid was just about to close up shop for the night and get his _real_ business started when his last customer of the night pushed the barred door open. The door chime Sid had installed more for his own safety than his peace of mind jingled above the patron's head. Sid barely glanced up, too busy counting his cash and making note of what inventory he'd moved that day, and what he was about to be able to collect the pawn on.

Whoever it was - some tall motherfucker - went right to the peg boarded wall of musical instruments and rang the service bell with a pronounced _swat_.

Sid put his money down slowly, sliding it into the zipper bag he'd use for the bank deposit. Another percussive swat of the bell, and Sid's temper was rising.

_Boy howdy, I sure hope this piece of shit has health insurance._ He made a very pointed effort of closing the register, and finally looked up to see Brainy staring him hard in the face from across the store.

Brainy slammed his palm down on the bell, hard. It didn't make much of a noise then.

"Brainy?" Sid didn't even try to hide the incredulous disbelief in his voice. "What the hell man?"

Brainy raised his hand and slapped it onto the bell again, staring Sid _right in the eyes._

"Dude, lay off the bell, I'm looking right at you. What the fuck do you want? What's the big idea with the bell?"

"Service." _Slam. Ring._

"Dude if you hit that bell one more time I'm kicking you out. What do you want, you here to pawn something?"

"No."

"Well quit wasting my time and tell me what you want dude, you're giving me the creeps."

Brainy jerked his head back towards the pegboard wall behind the counter. Several guitars were hanging, most of them long since abandoned by their former owners, pawned off for a bit of quick cash.

"You want a guitar?" Sid hated dealing with Brainy, the dude was just a blank wall and he had the most unpredictable behavior. And, Sid was grimly aware, he had the _most_ unpredictable behavior whenever Helga was involved. And Sid had just been pretty _involved_ with Helga.

"Yep." Brainy pointed at one in particular. Sid immediately got angrier.

His '69 Telecaster Thinline, shell pink. Easily worth three grand to the right sucker, and two to a savvy dealer. It was also his nicest, least junky department store knockoff. Not a replica. And it sounded great, too.

"Unless you got five large to drop on her right now, you better just get the fuck out, Brainy." _He probably knows his guitars and knows that's a bullshit price, but that should chase him off._

Brainy looked like he was about to rebutt the demand, and maybe make a counteroffer of some type, when the door chimed again, and Sid whipped his head impatiently to see Stinky plodding in, his face a messy smear of someone who had definitely fallen off the wagon.

"Jesus, Stink, not now, I've got a customer."

"Well howdy Brainy, I reckon I ain't laid eyes on your tall hide since those unfortunate incidents with Lila, on account of havin' litle to nothing to say on the matter."

Brainy just stared holes into the side of Sid's head while Sid appraised his stupid best friend. Stinky awkwardly draped his lanky torso over a counter, the damn thing only just barely coming up to his hip he was so tall. He held his arms crossed under him to support his lean, and even though he was trying to stay casual, it made him look like such an awkward mess of elbows and shoulders and wrists.

"Just, just stay there Stinky, I'll deal with you in a second. Brainy, unless you got the cash, get out."

Brainy stared him dead in the eye, uncharacteristically _present._

"Get the Telescaster down," he simply commanded, and Sid lost his patience.

"This ain't Guitar Center, Brainy, and I'm not paying a dime of extra electricity so you can try her out. If I take her down, you're leaving with her."

"Gosh, some nice guitar music would sure be something right about now, Sid," Stinky drawled, looking too damn pleased with himself for his dumbass suggestion.

"Stinky, I swear dude, you are wearing me thin. Make me an offer, Brainy, and it better be high or you're out."

"Nothing."

Sid actually heard himself choke out a laugh, and then shook his head. "Awright, that's it, you're both outta here. I'm closing, I don't have time for a junky and a mute idiot."

"Hey," Stinky interjected, sounding offended.

"It's free," Brainy insisted, not moving whatsoever.

"Dude, I told you not to waste my time and that's exactly what's happening here. Don't make me _make_ you leave."

"It's for Helga." Brainy crossed his arms, and set his jaw.

_Oh so that's what this is. _Sid had to do some basic mental mathematics to put the sense to the scenery before him, but, he wasn't stupid, and this was fairly obvious. Brainy was here to demand payback for the whole _Helga_ thing.

Well, like hell he'd be paying anything.

"Get out." Sid was acting like he was walking to his back office, but he was actually walking to the shotgun he kept behind his counter. He wanted to make a point, and remind Brainy - and everyone in Hillwood for that matter - that he was not some punk to be trifled with, and toyed with the way Rhonda had played with him, and underestimated the way they were doing now.

"I was Fuzzy Slippers first," Brainy casually remarked, and Sid stopped in his tracks. "Before LIla."

"_You?"_ Sid turned slowly, literally not believing what he was hearing. "What is this, surprise the fuck outta Sid night? Boy howdy, you better start making sense."

"It's true. When we were kids. All those stories were mine. Then Lila forced me to help her. I know everything she knows."

Sid narrowed his eyes at Brainy, almost _definitely_ sure he wanted to kick this guy's ass.

"Everything," Brainy continued, glancing to where Sid kept his shotgun.

Stinky had stood up fully, and was staring at Brainy almost as gobsmacked as Sid was, for the sheer lunacy of what they'd just heard. "You mean to say you _helped_ Lila all them years and know all the dark dirty secrets _she _knows and whatnot?" Stinky nervously glanced at Sid; they had some _dirty_ secrets.

"Yep. So, get the guitar down for me. I'm taking it."

"Fuck you," Sid spat from grit teeth. "You makin' a threat on me, Brainy? You sure as shit didn't earn that namesake if that's the case."

"You owe Helga, at the very least," Brainy continued. "We'll call all this even after. I'll forget what I know."

Sid considered something. It took serious dash to come into his pawn shop unannounced, act like a half-cocked fool, and then make insinuations of blackmail in order to outright steal something right off his wall. It was pretty much downright insane, and reckless to an almost laughable extent. Brainy truly, truly felt something _hard_ for Helga.

For someone who'd never feel the same way for him, probably.

_Rhonda's face when she can't help but laugh at one of my jokes. Rhonda's sigh when she's tired of dealing with me. The way Rhonda's neck smells in the morning. Rhonda's legs, resting on my back. Rhonda scowling in disgust at my pet names for her. Rhonda, never looking at me that way again._

Sid took a deep breath, and faked a cocky laugh. In truth, he'd felt nothing but bitter disgust in that moment, disgust for himself. Here Brainy was, doing the right damn thing for his woman, when that woman wasn't ever gonna be his to begin with. He was basically rushing a loaded gun with the intent to stick his finger in the barrel, all for some loony chick that was never gonna look his way. He felt disgust for himself, and a sudden, unexpected swelling of raw _admiration_ for Brainy.

"All right," he finally growled, relaxing the tension being held in his shoulders. He rolled his shoulders and neck, trying to shake the fight-or-flight adrenalin in his system, roaring for release. "All right, dude, you're fucking nuts, you know that? It's yours. Let me get my keys. Shit. You crazy piece of shit."

"You're gonna hand him the guitar, Sid?"

"Yeah, I am. Don't ask me why, this is stupid as fuck. But I'll make twice what it's worth tonight moving product so who the fuck cares. I'll write it off as charity, save on my taxes."

The exchange was quick. Sid took the Telecaster down carefully, and had it over the counter into Brainy's hands without any trouble or shenanigans. Brainy nodded once, sliding it into the softbody case Sid also coughed up, for free. He was almost out the door before he stopped, and looked back over his shoulder.

"Thanks. I was bluffing. I don't know anything."

He stepped out into the darkness, and the bell chimed merrily above Sid's front door, leaving the two friends gaping back at the _chilliest_ motherfucker they'd ever known. It took them each a full three minutes of gawking before they managed to produce sound.

"Awguhgh," Sid said first.

"Gwuuaghh?" Stinky replied, smartly.

"Did...did I just get _played?_"

"I reckon...both of us just got played like a fiddle, yessir."

"Holy shit. _Holy shit._ I can't believe that just happened. I can't even go _after_ him, that was...that was _insane._"

"He robbed you," Stinky laughed manically, trembling with the strange giddy emotions awfully similar to someone who'd just had their arm amputated unexpectedly.

"He conned me but good, that shifty sonovabitch. I ain't even mad. That was _brass._"

"Shoot," Stinky sighed, wiping a laughter-squeezed tear from the corner of his eye. "I never did reckon Brainy for a con artist. At least Helga will look good with that nice shiny pink guitar. It'll be right proper since she smashed her other one."

"Yeah, what...what a thoughtful fucker. Shit. Anyway," Sid shrugged, suddenly remembering his formerly sober friend came into his pawn shop at a very late hour, definitely on some fucking drugs. "You off the wagon, you tall piece of shit?"

Stinky's cheeks pinked a little, which was quite noticeable since the tall young man was so pale and white all over, and had such a clean and clear complexion.

"Ah, yes, I'm sorry," the guilty Stinky admitted. "I've been ponderin' too much about these crazy years with Fuzzy Slippers gone but always _threatnin_' to uncover everything. I reckon I've been a sleepless mess tryin' to understand how _Lila_ could have done all this."

"Ugh, yeah, it's fucked," Sid agreed. He looked pitifully at his friend. Even though a sober Stinky was a lost customer, and also, pretty insufferable, a stoned Stinky was always inches away from falling apart. And it never sat right with Sid that _he_ was party to Stinky's addictions.

"I, uh, came on account of I'm out and nobody'll deal to a junky these days," Stinky pressed, obviously embarrassed to be here, begging for drugs from his friend because all his dealers wouldn't in good conscience sell to someone so perilously close to rock bottom all the time.

"Stink," Sid almost started, but the door's overhanging bell jingled again, cheerfully interrupting their almost-moment. "Ah, fuck, who is it now-HEY ARNOLD."

Arnold Shortman jumped in surprise at the sudden shout, stopping mid-stride in shock. "WhAUGH!" His surprised sound was ugly.

"Heck, Sid, you startled me," Arnold shook his head, smiling easy at his two old friends. Sid internally groaned. _Perfect. What I needed after Brainy was this guy._

"Gosh, you ain't the only one," Stinky groaned, clutching at his chest. "My...my chest is awful tight."

"Arnold, my man, what can I do for you?" Sid eyeballed his pale friend, growing paler, and tried to hurry this little visitation along. He wouldn't be nearly as rude to Arnold as he had to Brainy, that largely had to do with the fact that Shortman here wasn't gruesomely slapping his service bell like it was a vulnerable bee.

"Oh, hey, Stinky! Good to see you man, glad you're here. Actually, I'm here for two things."

Stinky nodded at Arnold, and lowered himself to sitting against a counter, looking sweaty and shitty. Sid looked back at Arnold. "Okay, yeah, sure, what are they? I'm about to close up shop," he urged, trying to get this over with.

"The first is to let you guys know, Helga's cool if you guys come to the beach house thing. We both think it'll be a good way to settle any lingering bad blood. She sent me to come tell you in person, 'cause she figured if she came herself she'd try to pound you...her words." Arnold shrugged. Everyone knew Helga. No need to explain that one.

"Okay, yeah, fine. We'll be there, whatever. The second one?"

"Oh! Right. Well, I was hoping to surprise Helga, at the beach house, I mean. I wanted to buy her a new guitar. I came by earlier today when your assistant Ricky was working, he told me to come later and talk about a discount on your pink '69 Telecaster. He said to mention the 'friends and family' discount." Arnold snickered at the insinuation.

Sid wasn't laughing. Stinky was breathing hard, holding his abdomen.

"Gosh...I-I reckon..."

"Dude," Sid groaned. "I literally just let that thing walk out the door."

Arnold looked crestfallen, a huge frown on his big face. "What? No!"

"I'm not fucking kidding, Brainy just came here and left with it. He said it was for Helga."

Arnold's jaw fell slack. "Fuck?" He blinked, shaking his head and trying not to look furious. "That's, what the fuck, that's so weird."

"Sorry dude, I would have loved to sell it to you. Brainy actually _took_ it. I didn't make a red cent."

Arnold was about to say something, but, he suddenly stopped mid-thought, and pointed at a very prone Stinky. "Is he overdosing?" The manner in which he so _precisely_ pinpointed the probable cause for Stinky's current state sent a bolt of fear in Sid. Overriding that fear, however, was the fact that his best friend was probably overdosing or having a heart attack or _both_ on his pawn shop floor, with veins full of smack he'd probably sold him.

"Fuck! Stinky?!" Sid was over the counter in a flash, neatly leaping over the glass display cases to land crouched next to an awfully cold, gently trembling Stinky. Arnold was at his side immediately, a hand thrust under Stinky's neck.

"He's got a pulse, I can't tell if this is cardiac arrest. Call an ambulance."

Clutching Stinky's big lanky hand, Sid momentarily weighed the pros and cons of taking Stinky to the hospital. Pros: he might not die, and he'd probably get admitted to rehab after, and maybe get cleaned up for good. Cons: both he and Sid might go to jail.

"A-Arnold, he's got my stuff in him," Sid stammered, unsure what to do.

"Jesus Christ on God Mountain, of course he does," Arnold snarled, and whipped his cell phone out. "We'll talk about _that_ when we're at the hospital. Yes, hello, I need an ambulance please."

Sid's awareness receded from the present, only dumbly aware of the events transpiring around him. Stinky going limp. Arnold's frantic application of CPR to a quiescent body. The lightning-flash arrival of the paramedics, wreathed in white halos, and then suddenly being _in_ the ambulance, holding Stinky's hand, just so goddamn _terrified_ and yet not even there. Sid couldn't account for the time he lost between the sickly frantic ride from the pawn shop, where Arnold was locking up for him, to the waiting room at the ER, hands holding his head between his knees on a cold blue plastic chair. He had no recollection of any of that time, and could only dimly determine it must have taken place, because here he was, hoping his best friend wasn't dead on his smack.

"He'll be fine," he heard Arnold say, and had to look up at him to remember Arnold had taken a taxi to the ER after locking up his pawn shop. _Oh yeah,_ he remembered. _He has my keys._

He patted the side of his pocket, and felt his keys laying in there. _Oh, no, I have them._

A mudra of the heart began to hum in Sid's innermost thoughts. It was a circling, snakelike thought, an ouroboros that twisted around his subconscious and repeated the same mantra over and over: _"What am I gonna do?"_

Along his heartbeat, this simple plea tumbled, falling into places where his thoughts had space, and cramming between words the people around him - so many of his PS 118 friends here, when did they get here? - assured him with.

"They say it's not so bad," an unexpected Rhonda hushed to him, a hand on his shoulder. He nodded.

"He'll pull through," came a sudden Gerald. He nodded.

"Stinky was blessed with a magnificent fortitude," a startling Phoebe reassured. He nodded.

"You guys can't die until we make up," a welcome Helga joked. He nodded.

"We're here for you both," the kindness of Arnold spoke. Sid folded in half and held his face in his hands.

_I did this._ He did this.

They paint the walls of emergency rooms a neutral seafoam green, because it's been studied with special obsession which colors paint the subconscious with different emotional responses, and how to control that effect with the purposeful interior design hospitals are so carefully built with. Too much red would obviously indicate danger, or worse, a grim reminder of blood, and thus, mortality. Too much blue, and you've got the opposite problem, an overabundance of sorrow and woe, and the recollection of tears, and thus, loss. Green is just right. A light, inoffensive green. Evocative of nothing.

Nothing except the walls of hospitals.

They finally let Sid see him at nearly four in the morning. Everyone had stuck around, though, Sid hadn't said more than a half dozen words to any of them. They talked a lot, mostly to each other, about the professionalism and bedside manner of the doctors they'd seen so far, and the general cleanliness of the waiting rooms. Suddenly rounding the corner, a too-tired nurse called Sid's name and led him through an unknowable number of wide-swinging double doors, electronically and remotely opened from the other side at each threshold. In the ICU wing, there was always something beeping. Alarms and general alerts had an indecipherable difference to a layperson like Sid, so everything just seemed cacophonously terrifying. In a small cul-de-sac of rooms around a centralized desk with four nurses stationed around monitoring screens and equipment, the nurse took Sid to Stinky's dimly lit room.

They had him damn intubated, masked up, and stuck with a maze of IV lines from the low-hanging machines that dutifully dripped their medicinal payloads at medically predetermined rates. He was unconscious, and looked like hell. His gelled up swoop of hair had fallen, something Stinky _never_ tolerated, so Sid ran his hands through the greasy locks to prop them up against the rough cotton pillow. It had to be 200-count thread, tops.

A machine clicked and whirred next to him, and something beeped at the front door. The nurse that escorted him, and apparently Arnold, who Sid noticed was standing beside him, murmured something about not touching anything, and excused herself.

"This is my fault," Sid morbidly announced, and knew it was true.

"Yes," Arnold nodded. "It is."

"What am I gonna do, Arnold? They got my Stinky all tubed up," he felt the emotions he'd been drowning under numbly all night begin to swell up, brought on by the sudden visual confirmation of his best friend's brush with death, and the extreme exhaustion of being up so late without anything _keeping_ him up.

"Well, Sid," Arnold slowly started. "What matters now is exactly that. What you do from here, that's the important bit. Because you are right, you had a hand in this."

"Dude...you're absolutely shit at comforting a dude, you know that?" Sid bitterly groaned, rubbing his wet cheeks with his hands. He was shedding tears.

"He'll live, that's the important part for Stinky. Recovery will happen anyway, now that it's gotten to this. And we'll be there for him. But you," Arnold turned and pushed a finger into Sid's chest, hard.

"It's about fucking time you stopped pushing on your friends, and, for that matter, stopped pushing at _all._"

"Arnold, dude, this is not the time," Sid croaked, so, so weary.

"Wrong, it's _absolutely_ the right time. Stink'll be here for, who knows. Couple days. Maybe a week, a month. Long as it takes. He'll get clean, and we'll help him. But only _you_ can make yourself quit dealing. So, you stop. Tonight. Right now."

"You don't have any idea how this shit works, dude, please, just, just go. Leave me with my best friend."

"I will. You have a lot to apologize to him for, so, you should stay until he wakes up. They'll probably take him off sedatives once he's stabilized and de-intubate him then. He'll be in a lot of pain, partially from the intubation, and also, from the withdrawals. You'll be here the whole time, as much as visitation allows. I'll visit, too, until the beach trip."

"Yeah...yeah, okay. That all sounds good. Hey, how do you know all this?"

A grim look passed Arnold's face. "I am _familiar_ with the shit you deal, and the passage of its wake. And I _do_ know how it works. I know you have an escape route planned, every dealer does. So use it. I want you at that beach house, where I know you won't be able to move anything."

"Arnold…" Sid started, just so, so tired. "I love you, dude, but…"

"You know I'm right."

He did.

"Yeah, okay, so you're right. Fine. You're right. I'll stop. But you gotta _help_ me with the escape plan. I am a big fixer, dude. I can't just _stop. _Deal? Please say it's a deal." Side was basically begging.

Arnold stuck his hand out to be shaken. "Deal. We'll work it out at the beach house. Together. For stinky."

"Yeah," Sid agreed, shaking his hand. "For Stinky."

Stinky's vitals chirped at their predesignated time interval, and the machine keeping his lungs doing their jobs pushed and wheezed, and the room felt huge, hot, and dark, like the interior of an abandoned cathedral at night, full of old death and the void of loss.


	20. Chapter 20 - Build Yourself a Myth

A/N: I've spent a lot of time getting to this chapter, alluding to it, and in general, tweaking how it would go. I always envisioned that this story would have three major climax points, and tried to pace the overall plot to deliver you to them evenly and at the appropriate time. I think the first two were quite successful, first with the party and then with Lila's defeat. Now, I present to you, the first part of the final climax before the denouement and epilogue, _The Beach House._

This sucker ended up being so massive, I broke it into two parts. I didn't want to drop 32k words in a single chapter after all.

Trivia: this is the only chapter that does not have a Hop Along lyric as a title. Instead it comes from the inspiration for this chapter; Beach House. I recommend listening to Beach House's albums _Teen Dream _and _Bloom _while you read the next two chapters. It will complete the experience, and set the correct atmosphere for what you will read.

Keeping Arnold - Chapter 20, Beach House Part 1: If You Build Yourself a Myth

"...I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering!" - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

* * *

Arnold stared down the long walkway of the airport gate, blocking out the impolite urging from the flight attendant to keep moving.

He didn't want to leave again.

His companion nudged him to keep moving, and, remembering that he was not leaving alone this time, smiled for a fond memory, and pressed forward.

* * *

Leafing through the used vinyls, searching for any lost gold or treasure among the endless sea of Christmas albums and novelty records from the 70's, Helga spent her Saturday morning the way she'd been spending it every Saturday for the last six months since middle school started: away from home. Her fingers paused mid-flip, hovering over Nirvana's _Nevermind, _mentally checking if she'd already picked this one up against her internal catalogue, which boasted nearly a hundred LPs so far. _Nah_, she recalled. _Picked a nicer copy of this up at that estate sale._

At age thirteen, Helga had elongated even further from her already lanky and awkward frame, the ravages of puberty bringing the Pataki curves to her suddenly and dramatically while also bestowing her with an especial clumsiness akin to someone suddenly donning stilts for the first time. It made her a terror to deal with, aches in her joints and hormonal electrical storms in her brain a veritable Pollock of behaviors and motivations to color her already colorful personality. Helga was perpetually dead center in the moodiest of possible teenage moods, and dealing with the downward spiral of Miriam's drinking, and Bob's bloviating bellicose bellowing, and Olga's perfect charm, and Arnold was _still_ writing her like clockwork; so she had some _stress_.

She still hadn't done anything about her unibrow - she still kinda liked it, although a lot of people gawked. Nobody looks twice when you have a big thick black caterpillar across your forehead and you're just a _kid_, but, start cusping into the flower-scented bosomy embrace of _womanhood_ and suddenly everyone is all fussy about your face. She didn't pluck it for _spite_ at this point. Besides, one of her heroes, Frida Kahlo, kept her unibrow and famously painted it for the whole world to see! Why shouldn't she sport that sucker like a proud feminist badge of honor? So she kept it, and scowled at anyone that dared question her.

Still, she was becoming more and more aware of how people _looked _at her awkward gamble of a face. Which only put to make her more and more surly, outrageous, and unpredictable.

_No gold today, _she sighed as she confirmed the record store was sadly lackluster. If you could find anything pressed before 1999, it was something she already bought here or somewhere else.

_Wait,_ she suddenly stopped her search, catching sight of something familiar in the World Music section. Drawn forward, she felt herself lift the records covering the hidden treasure, exposing a pristine press of _American Football_. Her hand reached out to touch it, pulled towards it with a strange gravity, her eyes transfixed.

Another hand touched hers. Reflexively, she drew back, startled out of her near trance by the sudden, unexpected contact of skin on skin. The owner of the limb gawked at Helga, oddly familiar face just wide open as a barn door.

"Hey, watch it," she started to snarl, and then the instant of recognition hit her. "_Brainy?_"

"Uh, hi." Came his awkward reply.

"You look...so different. Is that you?" Helga had to squint to recognize the resemblances, but they were undeniable. He no longer had the oddly stooped posture of a perpetual slouch, and any metal orthodontistry he'd once had was long gone. He was slightly taller than the already tall for her age Helga, and was wearing a Sonic Youth t-shirt, torn grey jeans, and black doc martins. She had to pinch herself behind her back just to make sure this wasn't some kind of fever dream.

"Uh, yeah." He pushed his black glasses up on his nose, which had stayed long for his face but had seemed to grow into the space it had once occupied without any grace.

"Shit," she breathed. "You got tall. You reaching for American Football, too?"

"Yes."

Helga leaned back slightly, squaring her shoulders unconsciously, her teenage body responding to Brainy with immediate attraction, but her brain still unable to process the experience. This was a surprise. Brian, all grown up, and not dressed like an old man. And, apparently, with a decent sense of style and a good taste in music.

The last time she'd seen him up close and directly like this was right before middle school started, which had been a couple years now. The bitter memory of her breakdown and his awkward attempt to _save_ her from the chaos of her own galactic meltdown and depressive spiral hung between them. The last time she'd seen Brian, he'd told her he loved her, and she'd laughed at his face and threatened to pound him blind, deaf, and dumb if he ever got within ten feet of her again.

Apparently, the threat had stuck. Brainy looked visibly anxious.

"Aw, heck, I ain't gonna hit ya," she waved a hand, more than slightly embarrassed that she'd popped off so half-cocked at the poor guy.

"Uh, okay." Brian averted his gaze, definitely trying to avoid looking her in the face. Helga could have sworn she caught him glancing at her chest, but, she figured he was just nervous. He didn't seem the type to stare at a young woman's assets, at least not intentionally.

"Uh, yeah, so...do you want the record? I've already got a copy," she lied. Call it guilt, call it a sudden desire to be generous, or call it a sincere and unexpected attraction to the guy, Helga wanted to be nice.

"N-no, it's fine. See ya," he turned, starting to leave the small record store.

"Hey, wait! Hold on," Helga grabbed his arm, surprised at her own reaction but firmly gripping him in place just the same. _Is that a bicep?_ She'd never grabbed a boy's arm like this. _Ugh, why do I like that?_ "Don't take off, we haven't seen each other in basically forever, don't you want to, oh, I don't know, catch up?"

"No," Brainy slumped, and brought his hand up to take hers off his arm with a gentle firmness.

"Well criminy, why the hell not?"

"Because," Brain seemed annoyed in his responses now. "We don't have to ever talk again."

_Ouch._ _What is his problem? Wasn't this guy in love with me? And he's fine just dropping me like that? Oh, I don't think so. Nobody but Arnold rejects Helga Pataki._

"Hold the phone, tall boy, I'm _offering_ to talk to you, _friendly-like_, and make up for lost time. Maybe...m-m-mmaybe apologize." Her cheeks pinked, heat pushing to the surface when she forced herself to say the things she wanted to, but was afraid to.

_No more leaving things unsaid._

"Oh." Brainy relaxed, the pale ghostly white of his cheeks quite red. "Okay."

Helga waited at the door while Brainy bought the record. _This better be worth it, I haven't seen any copies of that before._ He caught up to her, carrying the precious burden under an arm in a brown paper bag.

"Thanks," he said shyly.

"No problem, Brains," Helga smirked. "Consider it a downpayment on a brand new friendship."

Brain finally cracked his quiet expression with a bright smile. _Fuck_, Helga mentally swore. _He's cute when he smiles._ _I could get used to hanging with that face._

Time passed quickly in their budding friendship. It took Helga a lot of overbearing prodding, but eventually she'd gotten the extremely quiet, shy boy to talk about things with her like his favorite bands (Fugazi, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Brian Eno), how he finally got his parents to stop dressing him (a handwritten note), and what he'd been up to in the past couple of years (learning to play the guitar). In exchange, she bored him with the morbid details of Miriam's further descent into a total lack of sobriety, her own favorite bands (Pavement, Pixies, and Veruca Salt), her own attempts to play the guitar, and the idle thoughts she had of forming a band someday.

It wasn't long before she was giving him her number, and sincerely hoping he'd call. He did. That night, and then the next, and then pretty much every night for three months. He only missed one night because he caught the flu and slept through his alarm to call her. The guy was dedicated to routine. Helga liked that.

It turned out to Helga's gobsmacked surprise, they still went to the same school. Brian was just _that_ good at blending in, and staying out of sight. Helga hadn't noticed that he was there before, but when she thought about it pretty hard, she remembered even being in the same classes as him a few times. She felt pretty bad about that. It felt weird to admit to herself that she had treated Brian pretty terribly for years, but as she began to get to know the shy boy a lot better, she was forced to acknowledge the unavoidable truth: Brainy was _awesome_, and she was a huge jerk to him.

And so it became that _she_ sought _him_ out. At lunch, they would go find a quiet spot under some trees and Helga would gripe about her classes and the kids she hated, and Brain would listen quietly. Which is mostly what he did when they talked anyway. Helga liked that, too. A quiet companion to just exist as a completely empathic sounding board for her most trivial issues was worth more to her than anything in the early days as a teenager, wearing oversized shirts and heavy camo military jackets from thrift stores to hide the budding femininity of her new woman's body. Her pink ribbon stuck around, but found itself removed more and more often, in favor of other accessories that fit her growing grunge aesthetic. Brian never offered a complaint or question for the outrageous looks she experimented with, wearing old JIffy Lube shirts with the name patch labeled "Shmitty," or torn fishnet stockings and ratty high top chucks, or just something bright and pink tye-dye because she felt like looking like a starburst of color.

Little by little, Brian helped Helga grow into the young woman she could dare to be without Arnold anymore. A picture of herself was able to take shape, trip after trip to the local Goodwill, trawling the record stores and estate sales to discover who Helga Pataki _might be_ beneath all the pink and anger. Brainy was her shadow, just like when they were kids, but, no longer an intrusive, wheezing spectre. A friend. A companion.

Eventually, Phoebe had to ask Helga why she was always absent their usual lunchtime chat sessions and always busy on weekends, and Helga had to fess up.

"Ah, I've just been hanging out with Brian lately is all," Helga shrugged, kicking a rock and trying not to seem embarrassed to answer her best friend's reasonable question.

"Brian? Who precisely is this Brian? Someone new you haven't told me about?" Phoebe's blinks of surprise were understandable, given the unfamiliarity with Brainy's real name out of context. Of course, all the PS 118 kids knew Brainy was named Brian, but nobody _called_ him that.

"No, Brian is Brainy. You know...guy who used to follow me around a ton?"

"Oh! Brainy! Wait, _Brainy?_"

"Yeah, we ran into one another at a record store and started talking. He's pretty cool, no big deal."

"Please forgive my impertinent queries here, but didn't he confess an unrequited passion for you in grade six?"

"Uh…" Helga felt her ears get hot with embarrassment. "Yeah, he, yeah I guess he did. But it's not like that, Pheebs, I swear. It's just nice to talk to somebody on my level about stuff."

"What about Ice Cream?" _There it is,_ Helga winced. _Guess he was going to come up the first time I talk to another guy._

"He's in the jungle last I checked, what of it?"

"Are you...over him?"

"Criminy! A girl can't make a friend?! And it's not like we ever stopped being friends anyway! It's just Brainy for pete's sake! I'm just talking to him for once instead of bashing his face in on reflex."

"It's just the first time you've ever specifically sought out a boy to interact with besides Arnold. You can forgive my confusion. I didn't mean to imply you had feelings for him."

Helga felt her face grow even hotter, and her eyes get wet with some kind of angry crying reflex. _Did_ she have feelings for Brian? _No, I love Arnold! _She inwardly protested, however something strange and twisty swirled in her abdomen at the question.

"Shit! I don't _like_ him like him! Cripes! I just like him!" Helga balled her hands into fists.

"My goodness, Helga, I wasn't insinuating," Phoebe began to apologize.

"I mean," Helga interrupted. "Sure, he's good looking, and smart, and easy to talk to, and has great taste in music, but…"

"But…?" Phoebe held her hands over her mouth, her own teenage budding interest in romance driving her to a powerful curiosity in the changes in her best friend.

"H-he's not Arnold." There _that _was. Something she'd been trying to struggle through since Brainy had become so...well, _awesome. _She knew she wasn't in love with him, and it made her feel so damn guilty that she still liked him even though she couldn't really take the next step further. " I couldn't, you know. _Like_ him, that way. If I ever did anything with Brainy I would feel like a mountain of crap. I'd be just having some fun, or, like, I dunno, just enjoying myself I guess? And he'd be way more into it than me. It would be totally unfair to him."

Phoebe held her face in thought, looking at Helga intensely. "You're attracted to him for sure."

"Aw heck! Dammit, Pheebs! Knock it off!" She was _definitely_ attracted to Brian. That was not in question.

"And you've already considered the possibility of a romantic relationship with him as well."

Helga's mouth squirmed in place as her face varied in between the most profound shades of red. She had to cover her face to keep from losing her mind, feeling like the safety of her hands was the only place she could hide. Phoebe was right on the money. Of course she'd considered dating Brian. She'd considered a lot more than that. It just wasn't going to work.

"But," Phoebe concluded. "You have concluded that despite your attraction, you lack the necessary passionate feelings of devotion to give Brainy a fair chance."

Helga took a deep breath, nodding her head and bobbing her twin ponytails with vigor and gusto. How thankful she felt for such an insightful best friend, who understood her so well.

"What a surprisingly adroit and mature position, Helga. I'm impressed at your sober analysis of the situation, and your ability to keep your hands off him."

"It ain't easy sometimes," Helga huffed, finally uncovering her face and wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. "I'm a healthy, normal teenager you know. Full of hormones and all kinds of romantic nonsense in my head. Some days I'd _love_ if he grabbed me and shoved his mouth on mine. But, it's just better this way. I don't wanna hurt him worse than I already have."

"Of course not."

"Anyway, Phoebe, I am just about to die of a heart attack here, can we uh, haha, change the subject to something less horribly embarrassing?"

"I heard Harold ate three lunches last week." Phoebe always knew how to cheer Helga up with something gross.

"Did he? That oinker. I ain't surprised though, kid wants to be a pro eater."

Phoebe tittered with laughter, and their conversation strayed away from the subject of Brian. But Helga couldn't help but think of what they discussed that day, time and again. Moments of private reflection, where she was far, far away from Arnold Shortman in both time and space, brought her to the hypothetical future of a bohemian love affair with the tall, lanky boy she'd learned to love but never fell in love with. Some days, he'd be doing the most _ridiculous_ shit for her, and she'd almost falter.

A hypothetical romance never indulged in never goes away.

Somewhere within the heart it is lived. All the imagined passions, troubles, and disasters of a relationship blend together in the imaginative pastiche of a daydreamer. Even if lips never touch, kisses will be kissed a thousand times each in a thousand different ways in the hallways of imagination. Apartments never lived in will be filled with the music that will never be listened to together, and beds never shared will creak with the love that will never be made.

What happens when the hypothetical is put to the test? Even for Helga and Brian, best of friends with an ocean of things in common, who have lived together for years, have shared nearly everything intimate save themselves, and have only one final barrier to cross to become lovers at last?

Can any reality measure up?

* * *

About twenty minutes into the car ride to the beach house, Arnold knew something was wrong. He wasn't _stupid_ even if he was doing his best to pretend everything he'd been noticing all week since getting together with Helga had been some easily explainable mistake or his imagination. But so far, little to nothing this week had been like what he'd imagined dating Helga Pataki would be like.

Puzzlingly, she'd been spending a rather lot of time around Brainy instead of her boyfriend, him. Arnold tried to understand ("It's just roomie stuff," she had explained), and keep himself from becoming monstrously jealous, but it wasn't easy. That first week of a relationship is the most intense, the honeymoon period. He was expecting a lot of Helga, all the time. After ten years of buildup, that they were finally, actually _dating_ should have been the starter pistol that kicked off an epic collision of passion and romance. Everything about their previous week had led him to expect that, anyway. When they were together, she _was_ pretty much always touching him - usually inappropriately - but, there was some almost imperceptible barrier, some membrane between them that he always felt he was pressing up against when he tried to _be _with her. It was as if she wasn't present, and had sent a dollar store knockoff version of Helga to deal with him.

At present, Helga was leaning against him, her head resting on his shoulder, and staring off silently out the side window nearest to her. He could smell the fruity punch of the many hair dyes she had applied to give her formerly ghostly white hair a dramatic galactic ombré, dark purples and blues swirling around errant locks of magenta and pink, and loosely braided into two thick tails that fell over her shoulders. She'd surprised him with the new hair color, a total DIY job of her own devising, about two days after Stinky's admission to the hospital.

She was nervous he wouldn't like it, figuring he preferred her straight blonde, but Arnold was able to convince her he adored her no matter what her hair color was.

"Helga, I am fine with any color you want your hair to be. And besides, why would you ever need _my _sign off on your hair? It's _yours."_

"Yeah, you got that right. But I just figured you were a bit more...traditional."

"Traditional? Why would you think that? What gave you that idea?"

"I honestly couldn't tell you, Football Head."

Arnold had laughed. "Want me to help you shave it bald? I'll show you just how _not _traditional I can be."

Helga had snorted and slid into his lap. Make outs followed. It _seemed _like a happy memory.

He felt his arm going numb from her weight pressing into the nerves in his shoulder, but didn't ask her to move. _Just a little more like this, _he worried. _Just have her close like this._

Helga shifted off of him, stretching her arms and legs in the backseat of Gerald's rental Jeep. She noticed the totally dejected look on Arnold's face and lifted a big black eyebrow.

"What's the matter, Arnold, you look like someone just denied your green card."

Arnold immediately tried to fix his expression. "Ah, nothing, I just was worried is all."

"About?" Helga leaned her cheek on her hand, elbow propped up by the door. One of her long legs - bare and in tiny grey Daisy Dukes - lifted up to rest a foot on the seat. _She's so casual but I can tell something is off._ Arnold knew.

"Just my mom and dad," Arnold partially lied. He found himself doing that really often since he started dating Helga. Dodging problems, not speaking his mind, and working to keep things smooth and happy. Light. Free of weight and circumstance.

Empty.

"Oh yeah, Miles and Stella are still in Brazil right? Things are pretty crazy there right now with the Olympics coming up."

"Yeah-yeah they are! Man, that's so true. I'm surprised you know that."

Helga pulled a face. "Why wouldn't I? It's kind of major global news right now."

"That's true…" Arnold felt something very unusual. He felt like Helga was a stranger. His girlfriend was someone he suddenly had the enormous impression he knew nothing about. She was certainly the same person that he knew as a kid, but so, so different now that she was an adult. _I don't know anything about Helga anymore._

"_Anyway," _Helga rolled her eyes. "You told 'em about me yet?"

"No, we haven't talked since before the party, actually."

"What?" Helga straightened up, looking pretty serious and grim at this news. "Dude, _uncool. _They probably think you're still fucking engaged to Sawyer!"

_Oh shit. _Arnold groaned and held his face with his hands. "Oh dammit, you're right. In all the insanity of the whole Fuzzy Slippers thing and starting to date _you_ and Stinky and getting ready for this trip, I've totally forgot to tell them I broke it off with Lila."

"_And _started dating me." Helga firmly jabbed him with a straight finger right below his armpit. "Although maybe not for long since you can't be bothered to announce it to your _family _yet."

Arnold was not sure she was kidding. "No, I will tell them, as soon as we get to the beach. I don't wanna bug Phoebe and Gerald with how...dramatic that's gonna be."

Helga snorted, returning to her previous lounging position. "Whatever Arnoldo, it's your family, you tell them however you want. Just make sure you tell them, so they don't show up come December expecting a wedding."

Arnold paused. _Did I tell her when that was happening? _The note. _Oh shit my stupid dramatic note. I did tell her. _He felt queasy, and was not sure it was the car ride. "Yeah...right. No weddings."

Things had certainly seemed grim the past week. Stinky was doing relatively well, for someone who was undergoing a medically supervised detox and withdrawal from opioids. Sid had helped the recovery efforts tremendously by anonymously providing the exact cocktail and dosage Stinky had overdosed on. Arnold felt like it was a good _start_ but it was hardly going to undo all the harm Sid's chosen _profession _had caused. Additionally, he'd basically had to twist Eugene's arm to get him to come to the beach house, intending to figure out _some _way to turn his life around, too. And then he heard Big Patty and Harold were gonna crash the whole thing, and so was Curly, and all of _that _would be enough if it didn't also feel like he was about to lose his girlfriend to Brainy, of all people.

Arnold was almost, _almost_ sorry he came back home. His return had seemed to spark a series of disasters for everyone he cared about in Hillwood, much the same way his exit had done.

_Lila…_

How easy it seemed to recall how simple things felt with her. Of course, he now knew, it was all a terrible lie. But ignorance _had _seemed like bliss.

_No, _Arnold remembered the party, and those electric hours he had felt so alive he was fit to bursting. _Helga is why I came back._ Silently, he stared at her, certain she was the reason he returned, but very sick with the thought that she might not be enough to keep him there.

_I feel like a stranger to these people, and I feel like I am just messing their lives up more. _Arnold stared at the freckles on Helga's exposed shoulders - she was in a black tank top with a logo of some band he'd never heard of - and counted them for the hundredth time since they started dating. She had nine on her left shoulder. Thirteen on the right.

_Did I mess up Helga's life, too?_

As he stared at his girlfriend, who seemed uncharacteristically sullen and quiet, he was not so sure that he hadn't.

"Everything cool back there?" Gerald called back from the driver's seat. Arnold caught his eyes in the rear view mirror, and saw the concern there.

"Yeah, just bored as shit," Helga grumbled. "The drive to this place is the worst part. Nothing to see but back roads and wind farms."

"It's not so bad, Helga," Arnold ventured. "Besides, it gives us a chance to talk."

"We _were _talking, Football Head. You've just been all weirdly quiet and sullen lately so I left you alone." She sounded slightly more bored than annoyed, which bugged Arnold like a persistent itch.

"No, I mean...about each other. Stuff we've missed. There's a lot to catch up on. We have some time in the car ride, why don't we make the most of it?"

"Yeah, okay, that doesn't sound too bad. You probably won't fuck that up." Helga shrugged. "What do you wanna know?"

"Well, let's start here...how long have you and Brainy been in a band?" Arnold resisted the urge to bite his lip in a moment of anxiety. He was worried he'd be too obvious by going right to the subject of his primary rival.

"Uh, about since we were about 13 I guess? Well," Helga straightened her posture up, counting it off on her fingers. "That's when we reconnected 'cause he stopped being such a weird creep, and really started to hang out. I hadn't been able to do much with a guitar except embarrass myself, but he taught me. Then we just sorta, started noodling around with our guitars and I slapped some poetry to what we wrote and Bob's your uncle, a band."

Arnold felt mild panic. They were evidently _very _close. Arnold had seen how they played together, first hand. Now, knowing that Brainy had taught her how to play her beloved guitar, and also had been the genesis of her musical talents altogether, he could not escape something that had been bugging him since he watched them play on stage.

Brainy and Helga played guitar together the way most people had sex.

It was an inescapable realization. Anyone who observed the way they moved and worked together on stage would notice the intimacy and familiarity they shared. Hearing the sounds they produced only reinforced the comparison. If Brainy was holding his guitar as his Helga analogue, then Helga was doing the same with hers.

He didn't know what it meant that Helga had destroyed her guitar in a cataclysmic overhead smash into an amp at the end of her show. _She said she was done with music. Does that mean she's done with her connection to Brainy through it? Or was it something else?_

_Why can't I figure her out?_

"You guys play pretty incredibly together," Arnold replied. "It's amazing to watch."

"It _was_ amazing. I told you, I'm done with music, Arnold."

"Helga," Phoebe turned from her seat in the passenger seat. "You can't be serious. You've put so much work and effort into your musical talents. Why would you stop?"

Helga bristled the same way she had the last time Arnold asked her the same question. "What difference does it make?! I said I don't want to play music anymore, guitar or bass or anything, and I'm done! That's my choice to make! Who says I have to keep going?"

"It's just such a shame, is all," Arnold gently pressured. "Your music is incredible."

"Tch. You guys are such enablers. Bet you don't say the same thing to Stinky." Helga snarled and returned to resting her chin on her hand and looking out the window with intensely closed off body language. _Warning. Danger. Do not engage._

"Wait, what's _that _supposed to mean," Arnold dared to ask, ignoring all his internal instincts.

"The art he makes when he's fucked up sells _so _damn well. It's such a shame he has to quit heroin isn't it?!" Helga snapped back.

Arnold, Gerald, and Phoebe sat in stupefied silence, unsure why she'd made such a comparison, but sobered that she had just the same.

"Way to be a fucking downer before we ever get to the damn beach, Pataki," Gerald finally scoffed. "You still a world class party pooper, after all these years."

"Gerald, stop," Phoebe chided him.

"No, it's cool, Phoebe. He's absolutely right. I'm the downer that's going to fuck up this whole beach trip for everyone. Don't forget that."

"Helga," Arnold started, audibly irritated by her sudden-onset shit attitude.

"Arnold," she interrupted him, without taking her eyes off the road rushing by them out the window. "Don't talk to me right now."

Through eyes that were beginning to see the truth of their relationship, the challenges they were facing, the burdens of both their shared and separate pasts, Arnold stared hard at Helga Pataki, within microcosmic certitude that she was _completely_ alien to him. All the Helga he'd seen thus far in Hillwood had been echos, ghostly remnants of their past as ten year olds together. Their baseball field pitching conversation, spoken through the slap of ball into glove, had been two kids chattering about the old days. The party had been Helga's apology for how things ended between them. Their date was where she finally forgave his leaving.

But who was this new woman, sitting next to him in the car and yet a million miles away?

_Who is Helga Pataki?_

He didn't know anymore. He just hoped he could find out somehow before it was too late. He had five days at a beach house with all their friends to make it happen. Five days to try to fix everything, including his own clearly messed up relationship.

With a heart that now understood the woman he said he loved was so much more than the memories and the mistakes of his past, he decided to try one last time. One more big shot to make the desire in his heart match the truth of his reality. He could tell she would not be making it easy. On top of that, he had a laundry list of serious dramatic issues he had to handle before the trip was over to try to at least get some headway on helping everyone else. He felt threadbare, frayed and stretched into atavistic and opposing directions.

But he was Arnold Shortman. His birth was a miracle during a cataclysm. If anyone could do it, it was him. He just had to pray it wasn't too late with Helga.

"Whatever you say, Helga," came his final reply, while he took the opportunity of a silent car ride to plan his _own_ dramatic gestures. Helga wasn't the only one that could put on a show.

* * *

A heavy pink duffle bag slumped against the far wall of Brainy's van, thrown there with the finality of someone who was fleeing someplace and never looking back. Helga hurled herself into the passenger seat after having rolled the heavy side door shut with a resonant, explosive _slam_, and, face a pink-cheeked, tearful mess, commanded Brainy to "_Just go."_

Brainy slapped his foot down on the gas so hard the engine whined before the tires squealed.

Helga leaned over to watch Big Bob's vanishing figure wave a lonely goodbye in the rearview mirror to his retreating daughter. Something about the way the wind blew his now totally greyed and silvered hair made her heart ache and yearn in devastating homesickness and nostalgia. At seventeen, she'd officially, legally emancipated herself, made off with her birthright, and struck out into the real world a self-made orphan. The new apartment awaited. Brainy had waited until the last possible second to come pick her up.

The van was almost totally empty, save a few boxes of her most precious belongings, their record collection, and their music gear and instruments. Within the steel walls of the white dodge van lay the whole sum of Helga and Brainy's belongings. The seed of a new future. Together.

Brainy drove in silence, bobbing in his captain's chair as the old used van barrelled over potholes. Helga felt miserable, and sorry for herself, and sorry that she had to feel those things at all over a family that barely cared she left. She felt totally desolate, and sick to death of feeling desolate.

They didn't talk the whole ride there. When Brainy's van rolled to a stop along the sidewalk in front of some crappy, decrepit looking brownstone apartments, Helga wiped her face with the sleeve of her black sleeved baseball tee and sniffed the mourning out of herself with finality. _This is the place_, she steadied herself.

Brian and Helga hadn't even been inside. The urgency of the move had forced them to sign the lease, sight unseen. Usually a very stupid move, but, Helga wasn't about to wait and let Bob change his mind and decide not to sign the papers. As soon as she was free, they were gone.

"It looks like shit," she scoffed. Brainy nodded behind her, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel nervously. "Oh well, it's too fucking late to back out now. Let's go see it."

The two front doors slammed shut, and Helga and Brian stepped out onto the sidewalk to examine the building.

"Criminy, it's hell of dilapidated." Helga noted that the sidewalk was even in shambles, crumbled and shattered along the stoop which was missing one hand railing. "You said the landlord doesn't care about noise?"

"Noise or pets." Brainy nodded, looking up towards the top of the building. He lifted an arm and pointed a long finger at one of the fourth story windows. "That's us."

"Fourth floor. _Excelsior._ That's gonna be fun to move furniture up."

"We don't have any." Brainy chuckled.

"Yeah well once the trust fund checks start rolling in, expect that to change. There's an IKEA within a day's drive of us, you better _believe_ I'm springing for an _Ektorp_ sectional."

Brainy snickered, and moved to the back of the van to open the double doors up. Helga fished in her pocket for the key he'd given her, the key to their new place, and their new life. Fishing it out, she stared hard at the tiny brass object, roughly toothed and dull. It seemed far heavier than it had any right to.

Helga and Brainy climbed the stairs to their fourth floor apartment, hearing for the first time their footfalls echoing in the old building through the stairwell that twisted up through the building's innards. Their apartment was at the end of the line, top floor, last door on the left. Helga had to jiggle the key slightly into the deadbolt to get the teeth to catch the internal mechanism, her keychains jangling in the effort.

The door swung open finally. A musty smell of old cigarettes and wet drywall stung their senses, rushing out of the dark, unlit, empty cubby hole of an apartment to greet them. "Phew," Helga gasped, holding her nose and stepping into the gloom. Her left hand reached over to fumble blindly for a light switch, hitting it by mistake about two inches lower than you'd expect it to be.

Light filled their new home.

The main living room area bulged out in front of them and to the right of the door, terminating on the furthest right corner into the porch veranda sliding glass door. The kitchen, tiny and fluorescent lit, hugged the left side of the living room and was just to the left of the front door. A single, stubby hall terminated roughly opposite of the front door into three doors; Helga's room, the shared bathroom, then Brainy's room, smaller by half thanks to the balcony and veranda.

It wasn't much. But, to Helga, it was the fresh start she so badly needed. Saying goodbye to Big Bob had been...less than great.

Bob didn't help Helga and Brainy load up her few modest boxes or anything. He didn't even offer. Nobody was expecting to, but it was still kind of irritating for this burly, barrel-chested dude to just stand there and watch things while the two kids - emancipated teenagers, but still kids - hauled her stuff from room to van. When it was all done, and her former bedroom was more or less emptied of everything she still wanted to keep, Bob continued to just _stand_ there, on the stoop, staring at his daughter.

"Well, Bob, that's it. I'll come back for the bed." Helga dusted her hands off on her jeans, trying not to look her father in the eye.

"I'll leave the toolbox by the bedroom door so you can take it apart. Call ahead before you come get it." His unwavering gaze stuck to Helga.

"Probably won't be a day or so before we bother," Helga shrugged. "I'm ready to get out of here."

"You know," Bob started. "I struck out on my own when I was a little older than you. It was my old man, couldn't stand his rules. So I made my own way as soon as I was able."

Helga snorted, crossing her arms and finally looking Bob in the eye. To her surprise, his eyes were a little misty.

"Anyway, I know you made your decision. Just like a Pataki, you'll go your own way. But," emotion seemed to waver his voice just the _slightest amount, _"Helga, you're the most like your old man. I don't expect you'll call or visit much. But you'll always be my kid."

Helga unfolded her arms, and with shaking hands, hesitated just a moment before she hurled her smaller frame onto Big Bob's chest, and squeezed him in a fierce farewell hug.

"Bye, Dad," she murmured against the aftershave-scented chest of his polo shirt. She didn't feel him move in response, but could hear his heart change pace against her ear.

Her duffle bag had been hucked into the van immediately after, and Helga and Brian peeled out, away from Bob, away from that broken home, and away from the childhood wrecked by everyone that _should_ have loved her.

Now, they were methodically bringing the boxes and bags and music gear up, one floor at a time, making cracks about the workout they'd been getting all day, and trying not to be terrified.

What seemed like a couple of hours later, they'd unpacked some of the kitchen supplies and sorted the entirety of their record collection into the shelved boxes, which were the first things they addressed. Priorities. Helga was sitting on the kitchen floor, her stomach making a hungry ruckus.

"Ugh, dude, we gotta take a food break. I'm starving."

Brian nodded. "There's a bodega down the block."

"Shit, let's go. Spot me five? I'll get you back."

"Don't worry about it, it's on me."

A short trip to the bodega later, and they had two plastic bags filled with junk food and snacks to tide their hunger. Brainy was generous enough to offer to make them nachos, which really just entailed pouring the cheap gas station off brand name jar of queso over the cheap gas station off brand name bag of corn chips. This recipe would never change as long as they lived together.

Helga and Brainy chewed their cheap tasting, but somehow deeply satisfying nachos, and downed sugary drinks with far too much caffeine, and idly discussed the general layout of their living room, and where they'd have to stuff soundproofing material to make recording work. They'd planned on turning their apartment into as good of a recording studio as they could manage and afford, with the intent on putting out an Orphan LP. Helga's songs were coming along nicely, and the last few parties they played for their friends went well. They made a good team.

Helga stared at Brian as he washed the two forks they'd unpacked for the meal, watching the way his shoulders moved while he worked the tongs with a brand new green abrasive sponge, thinking.

"Hey, so," Helga finally found the bravery to speak her mind. "I know you still got feelings for me, dude. Is this gonna be weird?"

Brainy didn't answer her for a good time, he just finished what he was doing, drying the forks off with a towel, before setting them aside. He finally responded, his tone a bit flippant. "Bit late for that."

"Well, yeah, but, you know, I don't wanna...wake up with you staring at me or some shit."

"C'mon, Helga," he turned to look at her. "I stopped doing that stuff a long time ago."

"Yeah." She chewed her lip thoughtfully, a little embarrassed. "It's just, now we're not just friends, we're roommates. I don't wanna...fuck that up."

"It's fine."

"You sure? 'Cause I can't, you know...reciprocate."

"It's fine."

"How can it be fine? I couldn't imagine living with someone I was gaga over and not trying to, y'know, _get them on board._"

"You can trust me," he shrugged. "I won't do anything. Ever. Not unless you ask me to."

Helga stared up at Brainy. "How can you be like that?"

"What?"

"Just, fuckin', selfless? What did I ever do to deserve that kind of...sacrifice?"

"We're friends."

"I wouldn't hold back on Arnold." Helga very plainly got the elephant in the room out in the open. "Friends or no."

"Still?" Brain just lifted his eyebrows, voice straining just slightly.

"Yep. Still." No amount of trying had shook Arnold free of her. She'd give him away, but, he was still the standard to which all other men, and all other affections she might have towards them, was measured.

"He's been gone for seven years. We were just kids." Brian shook his head. "I don't get it. I didn't get it then, and I _really_ don't get it now."

"Love don't make a lot of sense, dude."

"Tell me about it."

Helga smirked, pushing herself off her butt to stand up. "Well, if you say I don't have to worry about it, I won't worry about it."

"Can I just ask one thing?" Brainy was looking at the floor directly in front of his feet this time, not at her.

"Yeah, sure."

"Why him?"

Helga stared at Brainy. _Why him_ really meant _why not me._ Brian had been by her side for most of their lives, and had grown up watching Helga. If anyone _should_ know why she loved Arnold, perilously, terminally, fatally loved Arnold, it ought to be Brainy. He'd been there to see her pine over him obsessively as a child, and had watched her since their teenage years had started reading every single one of Arnold's letters with a helpless magnetism in her blood to every syllable he penned. He'd helped her through that terrible night when she finally figured out she'd gotten the _last_ letter some four months before the realization struck. He was always there. He saw it all. So Brian wasn't asking Helga, _why him? _Brian was asking Helga, _why not me?_

She'd finally gotten to a place in her life where she didn't _need_ Arnold anymore. That he was out there, doing his best and being a good man, wherever he was, that was good enough. Whoever he was with, whatever adventures he chased, he chose to chase them without her. And she'd allowed him that. She didn't put a single inch of herself in the way, though she wanted to. She even felt like sometimes, maybe she didn't feel that strongly about the Football Head anymore. It _had_ been just a childhood experience, and, she was so much older. An adult, now.

But no matter what she tried, she couldn't shake him from her. She still had idle fantasies of his sudden dramatic return, almost daily. She wrote songs about him. She talked to herself as if she was him in the shower, when she looked up at the nearly starless night sky, and when she was at her most miserable, speaking her truest thoughts to the wind in some ritual that spoke for itself. It wasn't that she _needed _Arnold to live - she didn't. But she knew that _living _for her was still something she did with his help.

Brainy, no matter how much she might care for him, no matter how low she might fall and stumble in her life, and no matter how lonely she became would never be Arnold. Couldn't be. Nobody could. Perhaps not even Arnold anymore, if she was honest. And she couldn't drag someone she cared about into that mess. She couldn't even move on from some schoolyard crush, and she clung to those childhood passions like a lifeline. Just imagining trying to make it work with someone else in the meantime was a _frightening _prospect.

But Brian deserved an answer. An honest one. Something that she could only admit to him and to herself. An intimate secret.

"Without Arnold Shortman, I wouldn't even be the woman you love. There is no Helga without Arnold. That's the sad, pathetic truth. Lila saw it, and it made her _pity _me. Now you know it. Pretty pathetic, huh? I stand here on my own two legs, I breathe this air and push it out to make these words, and I sing and write my songs. But Arnold gave these legs the strength they need to push me up. He gave my voice the bellows to take that air in. And he is the poetry I try to touch with my music. That's what love is. It's what _devotion _is. It's being a better person, and wanting to keep going, not because you _need _someone, but because they _inspire _you. I _do _love you, Brian, I really do. I can't thank you enough for everything you do for me, and I can never repay you.

"But Arnold's the other half of the mould they used to cast me. Even if I were to ever be with someone else - and, realistically, of course I will, because he's not coming back and wouldn't have me even if he did - I would be borrowing his ghost and his memory to make it work. I'm not ready to try that yet. I'm not _okay _enough with it yet. Maybe someday I will ask you to take that leap with me. Maybe. But I can't right now. I won't. And you shouldn't keep waiting for some hypothetical day that I might. It isn't fair to you or to the eligible women of Hillwood to be perfectly frank.

"You're so amazing, Brian. Please don't waste your life like I have waiting. Not for me."

Brian nodded to himself, listening. At last, when she was finished with her lengthy explanation, he seemed satisfied with something. Helga caught her breath in her throat when he stepped towards her, half expecting - _and half wanting _\- him to disregard her and just start kissing her. But instead, he clapped her shoulder as he passed her, and smiled fondly.

"Let's jam."

Relief washed through Helga. If nothing else in her shitty life made sense, at least playing music with Brian did. She hoisted her guitar over her shoulder and plugged in the shitty amp, ready to work out the tension of the day with some much needed shredding. She had a new idea she wanted to try out and Brainy was always game to experiment.

Flashing a smile as dazzling as any sun to her partner, the tiny flickering candlelight of Helga's soul struck up a jarring chord, tending itself with care, trying to push the shadow of Arnold just a bit further away this time. _Just a bit further_. Her guitar would be her every goodbye and lament, even as Arnold's air pushed through her lungs to sing the songs he put her in soul, and even as she stood on her tiptoes with the strength he put in her legs.

* * *

The crinkle of all wheel drive tires pulling heavy white gravel between their treads as the vehicle they bore to the beach house pulled into the unpaved driveway dwindled to memory; the percussive resonance of four door latches, and then the specific shifting crunch of eight feet dropping into the sandy drive, and beginning to march away crunch by crunch; the slam of doors; Arnold was afforded the rare opportunity to hear them all thanks to the icy silence that Helga offered him so graciously the rest of the hour drive. The four friends stood in a disparate array, brownian movement principles scattering them as their attention was drawn to the various panoramic sights and views of the coastline and idyllic three story beach mansion. Arnold scanned the area quickly, his attention drawn to Helga with palpable distraction.

_Nothing I have planned will work if she cold shoulders me._ Arnold had decided earlier in the week that Phoebe and Gerald and Helga and Lila had all been entirely _too_ busy planning and scheming and meddling. There was a time when it was Arnold's crazy schemes that were getting planned to help him meddle. Though he was rusty, he was still the boy in the blue cap at his core, and wouldn't be outdone with grand, dramatic gestures. He'd still have to figure out how or _if_ he would stay in Hillwood, but, it didn't mean he couldn't try one last big adventure to set things right.

But it definitely required that his girlfriend talk to him.

Arnold stared at Helga from behind. She'd pulled on a beach hoodie when the air conditioning in the car got too chilly for her, and had her hands in the thin front pockets. The backs of her powerful legs tensed subtly as she rocked on her heels, chewing bubblegum and blowing a monstrous bubble into the wind. She seemed to be staring out at the crashing surf, deep purple locks whipping in the robust beach breeze behind her.

He felt heartsick with affection for this woman.

He'd figured out this week, he'd always loved her, in some capacity. Even when he tried to do his best to move on after her years of silence, he always felt like he was trying to escape some grand destiny in her. Escaping meant chasing an even _more_ grand purpose, adventuring in the southern hemisphere and trying to change the world with his parents. But it had been so _exhausting. _Even if he'd had a world-class education with his parents, and had more worldly experience than most people could imagine, it wasn't until he'd finally gotten home again that he'd realized just how badly he _needed _it. Maybe home didn't mean The Sunset Arms, and maybe it didn't even mean Hillwood; but he was sure without a shadow of a doubt that home meant Helga.

This is what made this troubling new sensation of being unable to reach her so frightening. Where was the Helga that had caught his pitches? Was she even in there, standing there, picking an exploded wad of bubblegum off her cheek with an annoyed snarl? Was the girl with the pink ribbon even _here?_ He couldn't shake the dangerous sensation that he'd screwed up somewhere, and badly.

Which is why his grand gesture was so crazy. And why he hadn't told anyone.

Arnold crunched the chalky white gravel under his caballero boots, walking up behind her. Time to break the ice.

"It's a nice sight," he casually said.

"Mhm," she replied, flicking her glance towards him.

"Wasn't talking about the beach," he teased, hoping some flirting might help. "Actually, I was talking about you."

Helga's cheeks were as pink as her bubblegum. She rolled her eyes and turned away, obviously trying to hide an automatic smile.

"Look, Helga, I didn't mean to upset you in the car ride. I don't really _get_ what's going on with you and your relationship to music, but it sounds complicated. I think you can agree, we pretty much exclusively do complicated."

She snorted, chewing her gum open-mouthed. "Yeah, that's for sure."

"And I wanted to say, I won't push you to do anything. Ever. Not just music. If you ever wanna tell me _why_ you're having a hard time with it, you _know_ I'll listen. Until then," Helga had pushed her index finger to his lips, turned up to him and standing inches apart. She looked up into his eyes with hers, eyebrows knit.

"I've really been kind of a shit, huh?" She asked, her voice sounding _so sad. _"Arnold, I've...been less than a perfect girlfriend lately. Part of that is _disbelief._ I mean, I'm Arnold's _girlfriend?_ I'm _your _girlfriend. I still wake up and don't believe it."

"I can remind you," Arnold smirked, his hands taking her hips. Helga glanced down, and then back up at him.

"This is really hard, you know? And I know I'm doing a shitty job of it. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't partially _on purpose._"

"But why, Helga, why try to scuttle something you've worked so hard to have for so long?"

"I'm waiting on the feathers and tar," she shrugged. "For the other foot to drop. For something to make it stop working. For the dream to end. And maybe I'm just sick of the anticipation and want to get ahead of it."

She stepped away, hands back in her hoodie pockets. "I want it to last," she looked back at him, agony in her eyes. "I just don't think it will."

Arnold was shocked, and hurt. "You think I'm going to leave you?"

"Well, aren't you? Every time I bring up staying or moving back you dodge the question."

"I just haven't had time to consider the full picture of my future yet," Arnold shook his head.

"Alright then, bucko. You have five days. Consider it."

"I'm probably going to stay," he felt himself becoming angry and annoyed.

"_Probably?_ So I'm supposed to do _what_ with that?"

"Well, who said you have to stay?" Arnold threw the gauntlet down. He'd hoped to save this until later, when he knew for sure what he wanted to do.

Helga rolled her eyes, however. "My degree? My stuff, my family? My friends? Why would I leave?"

"All of that can be somewhere else. Trust me. You can get your degree anywhere. Stuff moves. Your family is a disaster. And besides, family isn't just who you're related to, and people like you and me make our _own_ family. And last, besides Brainy, who else lives in Hillwood that you really want to stick around for?"

Helga rocked on her heels, and bit her lip. Arnold knew he'd have her thinking.

"So, what, are you suggesting if you don't stay in Hillwood I just up and go with you? Follow you around like some lovesick puppy, no destiny of my own that doesn't have you in it?"

"No, that's _not_ what I mean," Arnold started to explain, but Gerald called out to him.

"Hey, Arnold! Need your help man, you two lovebirds can get to romancin' later, we gotta unpack."

Arnold hesitated. "Helga, we have to talk about this later. In the meantime, can we just agree to cool it with the silent treatment?"

Helga threw her hands up. "_Fine!_ I was gonna apologize for that anyway. Sheesh, I don't know what I was thinking, trying to get away from dramatic talks with Arnold Shortman of all people."

"Oh babe, you're my girlfriend now. I hope you are _ready_ to get _communicated to._" Arnold grinned and turned to go help Gerald and Phoebe. Helga followed suit.

"Shit, you communicate? Damn I bet you probably remember birthdays too."

"_And_ anniversaries. Like clockwork. I hope you like surprise grand romantic gestures."

"Oh great," she rolled her eyes, although Arnold could see the stupid, sloppy grin plastered across her face. "Because _that's_ what I want, a communicative and thoughtful boyfriend."

"_God_ it's hard to be you."

"It's the _worst._"

Things felt easier after their talk. They helped move the cooler full of a week of food and supplies to the large first floor kitchen, which had been totally modernized with dark granite countertops, recessed lighting, stainless steel appliances and back splashes, and a big central island with an array of copper pots hanging above from an old French kitchen style chandelier wrought in black iron and brass. Arnold remembered staying at this exact beach house as a kid once, with Helga. The pataki's hadn't owned the place yet back then, but Bob apparently had taken a liking to it.

The first floor was dominated by the kitchen and large central living room and conversation pit, a slightly lowered recessed area ringed with lounging couches and cushions, to create artificial intimacy. Two very large flat screen televisions flanked the room, one above a black stone fireplace and the other hanging off a wall adjacent to the kitchen. Stairs turned the corner on the wall opposite the front French doors, to a second floor with four bedrooms. The third floor had three more. Six bathrooms were tucked in between rooms along hallways, with a big one on the first floor.

The whole house had an interesting mix of dark, warm colors, and the expected nautical theming to the decoration. Big shells sat profoundly on tables and bookcases, miniature ships were scattered throughout, and portraits of foggy lighthouses could be found hither and thither throughout the manse.

This would be where it all happened.

Arnold and Helga claimed a room on the second floor, near the stairs. It had a single queen bed and an overall cozy atmosphere. Helga tossed her pink duffle bag onto the bed and flopped her torso behind it, bouncing on the almost too-springy mattress. The headboard rattled against the wall when she rocked the bed. Arnold noticed her notice that, grin wickedly, and rock the bed with her hips and shoulders.

She glanced up at Arnold while the headboard knocked around on the wall, mischief in her eyes. "We're gonna keep our neighbors up~"

Arnold rolled his eyes and snickered. "Have you always been such a horn dog, _Hornga?"_

"What did we say about that name?" Helga tosses a decorative pillow into Arnold's face. "And yes! Since puberty. Helga runs _hot_, always has. It's a miracle you were my first," she suddenly slapped her hands over her mouth, eyes wide, full of dismay and shock.

"Whoa, hold on, I was your _first time?_" Arnold's grin spread, overtaking his wide football shaped head.

A thin, high shriek of horror left Helga, muffled slightly by her hands. She frantically grabbed for a second decorative pillow, and yanked it over to cover her quickly reddening face.

"Dude, hold on," Arnold laughed, scooting over to the bed and climbing over Helga, straddling her with his knees and attempting to pry the pillow free. Her iron grip refused to release it. "Hahaha, Helga, answer me!"

"No!" Came her muffled shouted reply.

A brief struggle ensued as Arnold, laughing, attempted to wrench the pillow off Helga's face while she, growling and snarling, held on for dear life. Arnold eventually triumphed, though it was part in due to Helga voluntarily releasing the pillow once she could tell he would not relent. Arnold tossed the pillow away, smiling down at the pouting, scowling girl he loved, her hair and short trimmed bangs in messy disarray.

"There's my girl," he fondly cooed, cupping her face. "Aww, and what a face, sourpuss."

Helga snarled at his teasing, and popped him with a fist in his shoulder. "Jerk!" she growled.

Arnold laughed, holding his smarting, quickly numbing arm. "Hahahaha, hey! Ouch! Watch it. I'm just tickled is all."

"I'm so glad my sex life is such a bountiful source of amusement for you, asshole."

"It's not _funny,_ so much as it is surprising."

"Why the hell is it surprising?!"

"I mean, I guess I just sort of expected that you wouldn't hesitate if someone caught your fancy."

"I _wouldn't._ Do you not recall the last week or two? I am bruised and pulpy from overuse."

Arnold curled his lip at her vivid description and snickered in his response. "So, what, you've just been a celibate nun this whole time, until I showed back up?"

Helga chewed her bottom lip, still red in her cheeks and obviously embarrassed. "Nobody else passed muster."

Arnold smiled down at her, just overwhelmed with fondness for this woman. "I'm glad I made the cut."

"Sheesh! Get off me, you big lug!" Helga pushed Arnold off of her, and sat up, rubbing her cheeks with her hands. Arnold laughed freely, falling onto his back and folding his hands onto his belly.

"I really would have thought Brainy would have been tempting."

Helga whipped her head around to stare at him. "Why would you say that?"

"What? He's handsome, tall, creative, and _totally_ in love with you."

Helga's face twisted around a few emotions at once, turning between angry, embarrassed, and confused, eventually settling on a horrible grimace that combined all three. "What?!"

"What? It's no big deal."

"What the fuck, Arnold!"

"Why are you so upset? I'm just pointing it out."

"Argh! Because, you, you stupid man! This is like, sensitive shit! Thin ice! Dangerous ground!"

"I'm not threatened by him or anything," Arnold felt the lie in his own statement, but continued. "I think it's sweet. He's done a good job watching your back anyway."

"Ugh! What the fuck is with you and Brainy lately?! It's like I can't spend time with either one of you without you bringing the other up!"

"Oh, he talks about me?" Arnold's eyebrows went up.

"All this week! _Arnold_ this and _Arnold _that. I make _one_ stupid suggestion and he falls all over himself with this clingy damn bullshit behavior. You know he went and bought me a new guitar when I specifically told him _not_ to?!"

_Dodged a bullet there,_ Arnold breathed in. "He did? Was it pink?"

Helga blinked, shrugging. "Of course. How'd you know?"

"It's what I would have done."

"UGH!" Helga stood up, pacing the small room impatiently. "I'm so sick of men ignoring what I say and just doing whatever they feel like!"

Arnold watched his girlfriend cross the tiny room a dozen or so times, her hands working and gesticulating furiously while she ranted. He could tell this pressure had been building, and what's worse, he'd contributed.

"I can't even express any kind of honest pain to a guy without them trying to make it work for their own ends! I'm sick of it!"

"Hey, calm down, I didn't know you didn't want a new guitar."

"Oh really?! Criminy, what does _I'm done with music _mean to you?!"

"I didn't say I was right, I just said it's what I thought. You set me plenty straight on that particular topic, trust me."

Helga snorted. "At least you listen the fiftieth time. Ugh, I can't believe I am having to rant about this moments after confessing I was a virgin when we finally had sex."

"Yeah, well, that's my fault."

"It is! And it's not like I was holding onto my virtue for you or anything like that, so don't get the wrong idea!"

"It hadn't even crossed my mind."

"It's not like I didn't have ample opportunities or I wasn't tempted or anything!"

"I'm sure you did."

"And yeah, Brainy is pretty hot and he would have completely rocked my world at my slightest suggestion, but I couldn't do that to him!"

Arnold listened intently.

"He's like, my brother, or something. My platonic soulmate. I couldn't just use him to get my jollies like that. If I was gonna sleep with Brainy it would have to _mean_ something. And that baby is thrown out with the bathwater now, so it's moot."

"I wasn't suggesting you give it a shot," Arnold chuckled despite himself, and the obvious tension in their conversation. "I was just saying, I can't say in your shoes I would have been so decent and noble."

"Oh yeah?! What about Lila, while we're on the subject!" Helga squared off with him, and for an instant Arnold recalled the flash of her fist across the room in that naked instant he told her he'd been engaged.

"She tried to seduce me once, after her dad and stepmom passed. But she was stupid drunk on bourbon and I just put her to bed. We kissed, though."

Helga seemed to calm. "Well, she _was _your fiancé, so I _guess _a kiss is expected. I'm _still _entitled to be mad about that."

Arnold smiled. "For how long?"

"As long as you were engaged to her plus a day for good measure, jerk. Ugh. Okay, so, what, was it your first time, too?"

Arnold noticed the slight waver in her voice as she asked him this, an unmistakable tenor of hope layered beneath an angry bravado.

"Yep."

Helga seemed to uncoil. "Oh. Huh." She turned away, but Arnold was certain he saw her try to force a smile down into a scowl as she turned. "H-h-how about that."

"And maybe I _am _a bit more old fashioned like you think, because I held onto my first time consciously. I wanted it to mean something, stupid I know."

"It IS stupid. Nobody should care about how many times their partner has done it before them!" Helga still had her back to him, shaking slightly.

"But it's okay. I don't mind doing something stupid if I think it will mean something in the end. And, honestly Helga? It paid off." Arnold stood up off the bed, and walked over to her. "Call me stupid, call me old fashioned, call me a hopeless romantic, but I was so, so happy that it got to be with you in such a special moment."

"Agh, fuck," Helga hiccupped, turning to push her face into his chest. "Why are you like _that _when I am trying so damn _hard _to stay grounded."

"Like what?" Arnold smiled and hummed a happy note as he felt her face squirm against his collarbones. "Schmaltzy?"

"Ugh, _yes. _I _love _schmaltz. Don't you ever tell _anyone _that I do, but...ugh, I love it so fucking much." Her fists balled into his shirt at his shoulders, and he felt her breathing against him slowly.

"My lips are sealed, at least until I find an appropriately embarrassing moment to harass you."

Helga smacked his shoulders with the flats of her palms. "Quiet. You're ruining the special moment."

Arnold held her for a few moments like that, doing his best to keep his busy thoughts quieted so that he could just _enjoy _the experience instead. Finally, he had to speak up.

"Hey," he said gently. "You know we'll be okay, no matter what, right?"

Helga looked up at him. "No matter what _what_?"

"I mean...like, if we break up." He didn't want to think of that possibility. It seemed insane to even say the words, when their relationship felt perched precariously enough as it was. "It wouldn't mean we went back to never talking again. I won't just disappear again."

She searched his face for a long time, inches away from him but seeming so far away within the crystal blue of her gaze. "You so sure about that, Football Head?"

"Positive. Even if I leave Hillwood and you stay, somewhere down the line. I'd keep writing to reach you. You'd write back this time, right?" Arnold had to look away from her, too caught up in the merest idea of being apart from her again, and the vast, emptying feeling of dread he felt regarding that destiny.

"Yes." No hesitation. "That's a promise."

"Good. Keep in mind, if I have anything to say about it, this won't ever come up. But I just wanted you to know regardless, if something _happens_ and we end up apart again somehow - after exhausting all possible options - I'd only ever be a phone call or a letter away. I'd cross hemispheres to spend time with you, even just as friends. I already did, once. I'd do it again. Hell," Arnold felt emotion knot itself in his throat, and he dared to look down at her. "I'd come be an usher at your wedding, if it meant seeing you happy."

"Shit," Helga hissed, and pushed her eyes back into his shirt. "Don't talk like that. I won't marry anyone, can you imagine me as someone's _wife?_"

Arnold nodded. "It's not so hard to imagine for me actually."

"It is for me! I am serious here - that domestic life, it doesn't suit me. A husband, a mortgage, kids...PTA meetings…" Helga shuddered against him involuntarily. "No thanks. Besides, thanks to Big Bob and Miriam, I don't exactly have a good model to go by."

"That's not what every marriage is," he urged. "Divorce, anger counseling, addiction. Miles and Stella, mom and dad I mean, they didn't do half of that."

"And look where it landed you."

"True," Arnold hummed. "Living half my life not knowing if my parents were alive or dead was...not great."

"It took you away from your home is what it did."

"True again. But I'm not suggesting that you have a kid and leave him in guardianship with your mom and dad while you trek the globe righting wrongs. I'm just saying...the idea of you, as a wife…"

Helga looked up at him, something terrible, something final in her eyes.

"Appeals to me."

Her mouth closed around his, and Arnold squeezed his eyes shut at the force of her passion. Somehow, no matter how many times she kissed him, it always felt like she was knocking all the air out of his chest and replacing it with furnace fire. It didn't just make him weak when she kissed him like that, it made him crazy. He had to grab hold of her shoulders just to remind himself he was still on Earth.

But why did it sort of, fleetingly, almost feel like she was kissing him goodbye?

* * *

"I'm telling ya, Brains, this beach house is real swank. Big screen TVs, full mini bar, and miles of private beach scenery to chew pensively. Bob spared no expense, finally doing something right in his miserable career. It's just what we need."

Helga smiled over at her tall, awkward friend, who was driving them to the spot where they'd record and cut their first album together. The past year living with him had been great, far better than she'd imagined even in her most optimistic dreams. It turns out, when you don't live with the wreckage of an alcoholic and a rich blowhard, life could actually have some nice qualities to it. Having any kind of regular groceries in the fridge was a new concept to Helga, who usually lived off trashy snack foods and diner garbage. Brainy _cooked._ Nothing too fancy, but when even your typical Thanksgiving dinners were takeout and candy, a hot, home cooked meatloaf was basically Nectar and Ambrosia.

On top of that, he was clean. He cleaned things. He picked up discarded clothing, trash left in not-trashcan places, and even washed clothes. He was so clean it actually got Helga off her ass to do some chores from time to time. She needed someone like that in a roommate. She could just imagine the disaster living with Phoebe would have been, for example. She loved her best friend dearly, but the girl was _particular_. Brian was _accommodating._

Luckily, so was their landlord. When the building manager had said they didn't care about noise, they apparently meant it. Helga and Brian would often play their music at any volume they pleased, well into the late hours of the night and early hours of the morning.

As soon as Bob had accidentally let the detail that he'd bought a frigging _beach house_ slip, however, Helga was scheming to get the keys in her hot little paws ASAP. It took some convincing, and really, _a lot of lying_, but Bob relented.

"I need someone to air out the place anyway," was his gruff way of allowing the two teens to crash the new pad together. And, his condition of "No parties."

Helga didn't intend for anything of the sort. All she wanted was a nice, long weekend away from HIllwood, away from freshman university classes, and away from the inescapable absence of Arnold's letters. They'd slowed to a mere three times a year - her birthday, Christmas, and Valentine's Day, that sap - but shortly after she'd moved in with Brainy and her birthday had swung by with no letter, and the long gulf of time between then and Christmas expanded before her with a threatening emptiness, she'd been looking for ways to stop thinking about how he wasn't writing her anymore. Then Christmas came, and no letter came. Then Valentine's day, and then her birthday again.

And that was Arnold done writing her.

She'd done a lot of thinking about why they stopped, and what could have pulled her thoughtful boy from the writing desk in such a way as to leave her with only silence. Sure, she hadn't written him back except once, but, his letters were always so forgiving of her silence. They'd drifted into a tone that was chummy. Cordial. Politely distant. But they'd never _stopped._ And here she was, pretty sure she'd never hear from or see Arnold again, and chewing on what that meant, and Bob accidentally slips in the phrase "My beach house" into a conversation, and, well, you don't spit in Opportunity's face when she comes bearing gifts.

But Arnold was thousands of miles away, and Hillwood was a few dozen, and pretty soon the only thing looking at her would be Brainy and the Sun. She'd been used to both her whole life. Getting away would be more than just nice, it would be a sorely needed escape.

Pulling into the private beach drive of the _La Costa Nueva _residential development, you didn't see very many houses. That was on purpose. Each house in the development had enough private land surrounding it for a buffer zone that you rarely had to see or acknowledge your neighbors. Helga remembered the last time she'd been here, and it had been a much more public beach. But, time passes, and beachfront property gets bought up by wealthy hedge fund companies, and pretty soon the nice public beach that your three story beach house backed up to is a long expanse of private property.

Helga whistled when she saw it. Brian nodded in agreement. Bob had done well in the advent of the smart phone. He'd been smart and gotten out of beepers before the dot com bubble burst, and gone in hard on blackberry and mobile devices. By the time the iPhone 3 had released, he was sitting on a small empire of licensed resellers for Apple, Android, and even Windows phones. It helped that Hillwood didn't have any official retail stores for the big guys, and his little empire of beeper stores translated well into a little empire of mobile carrier brick and mortar locations. It made him rich.

Beach house rich.

They pulled up and parked under the shade of a big, crooked palm tree, stepping into the sandy gravel with crunchy steps. Helga's flip flops immediately filled with white-hot sand, and she cussed and danced to get them off her feet, only _that _made her dance and cuss when her bare soles touched the burning sand itself, and she had to half skip, half leap onto the steps of the encircling porch to keep her feet from burning off. She was scowling and slapping the red, angry soles of her long feet when Brian marched up the steps with a grin.

"Shut up," she smirked. "How's it look? Pretty swanky right? The benefits of a deadbeat dad with an offshore bank account."

Brian snickered, and stepped into the porch to get a better look around. Helga followed him, dodging a few errant red wasps that were occupying a nest or two in the overhang of the second floor. With the slightly higher vantage point, their walk around the back of the house finally exposed the completely expected, but always awesome view of the ocean itself. A short walkway of weathered wood snaked through the dunes that separated the large yellowing lawn that bulged out of the back of the house, leading to the white-yellow sands of the beach itself. Everything felt sticky, and smelled warm and salty, and Helga felt _really_ good.

"Fuck, I'll never get tired of seeing that." Helga sighed, standing beside Brian to enjoy the sheer spectacle of the view. Brian nodded, unable to add anything except mute agreement.

They unloaded their musical gear quickly. After an hour or so fussing back and forth with where they'd have to put the recording equipment to get the right sound quality and fidelity they needed, and finally deciding on the attic where their modest amount of soundproofing material could cover the most ground, they left their instruments to get to the important work of doing nothing whatsoever in as drunk a manner as possible.

Helga was enjoying the twisty way her _cerveza _was cradling her brain pan, laid out on a reclining adirondack chair in the slightly yellowing grass of the back yard, and just really, really, really enjoying not having to think about Arnold for once.

Which of course was a way of thinking about Arnold without admitting that she was.

Brian was fussing with the chintzy firepit they'd found under a wheelbarrow, and rolled out onto the sandiest part of the backyard to _obviously_ put to use. The house had firewood in abundance, stacks of cords of post oak about five feet tall up against the back porch, and definitely infested with snakes. They had mind to turn at least some of that nasty wood into a good time by means of a mostly contained fire, with the aid of alcohol and a temporary total lack of responsibility.

Helga watched Brian, as she often did when they were alone, and wondered about their friendship, as she often did drunk, and wondered if she should bite the bullet and sleep with him finally, as she often did when they were alone and she was drunk. A beach house getaway was a perfectly acceptable place to hop in the sack with someone, and it seemed _wasteful _to have so many bedrooms and not try them all out. She rolled her Dos Equis in her hand, watching the squished lime inside the bottle blunder around the lingering few sips of her beverage, and gave serious thought to just letting nature take its course once the sun went down.

They were adults. They were drinking and having a good time. They were attracted to each other and liked each other. It seemed silly _not_ to have sex.

Except, inevitably, always, her thoughts returned to sports metaphors for getting laid, which led her down the short mental pathway to _football, _and _viola_, there was the potential evening of casual penetration spoiled. Cognitive association is a motherfucker that way.

So she stewed in a perfectly frustrated state of wanting to get laid, having the means at her disposal, and the opportunity in abundance, but lacking the final emotional piece of the sexual jenga game of her libido. She just _couldn't._ So instead she sat and watched Brian finally get the firepit started, and thought about sex between breaths, and felt the lovely false freedom from the ghost of a little boy in a blue cap that stubbornly stuck with her no matter how much she was specifically _not_ thinking about him at all.

Brainy slumped into a chair next to her, brimming with pride at the tiny, flickering flame of a fire he'd managed to get started in the small dark circle of the fire pit. A few logs of post oak stood in rough approximation of a teepee, with the gathered sticks and palm leaves at their empty epicenter flaming up nobly from the bellows of a coastal breeze.

"Nice," Helga nodded. "We should roast marshmallows. Did we bring any?"

"Nope. But the pantry had a bag."

"_Nice._ Man, good guy Bob. Or I guess I should say, good guy Bob's housekeeping agency."

Once the sun had set a little, and dusk began to creep her lavender blanket over the beach view, the firepit took an almost mystic orange cast to it, leaping shadows from invisible hiding places around the backyard, and filling the sticky beachside air with the hot scent of char and smoke. Helga and Brian, now with their instruments, noodled without aim and with the inexpert clumsiness of two drunks beside the fire, searching for that perfect beach hit song in the awkward noisome tumult they pulled out of wood and string.

It was like this that Orphan wrote, finished, and recorded their first and only album. At the beach they laughed and played, swimming as far as they dared under threat of shark and riptide, and in the house they drank and ranted drunk thoughts about life and the universe together. At the firepit they boasted and told tall tales, and wrote stupid silly songs about nothing whatsoever. In the attic they found their discipline between the spaces of comfort and leisure, and put that relaxation to good use to cut their best performances yet. It came together, piece by piece, and literally nothing in Helga's life had felt more perfect.

When she was with Brian alone, things just _made sense._ Nothing was ever like that anywhere else, or with anyone else. Catching for Arnold was the only thing that had ever gotten close. She could be totally, utterly, unapologetically Helga. And she could do this not just _comfortably_ but _unapologetically_, simply doing whatever felt natural and saying whatever came to mind. Songs fell from her fingers and poured from her lips as easy as anything. Being _Helga_ felt like an okay thing to be.

When they packed up at the end of the week, having decided to stay three days longer than they originally intended to finish the whole LP, Helga felt absolutely desolate. Not for the loss of such a sacred space to her, or for longing to remain at the house together with Brian, but for the fact that she was convinced she'd never, ever feel that good again. How _could_ she?

And even when she was convinced, all but certain, that there'd never be another experience anything like coming to the beach house with Brainy and cutting their first album together, the thing that made her the most sad was without question that it was _still_ not as perfect as it could have been. Because even though she'd spent every waking moment on this vacation, utterly, totally devoid of his presence in her life, Helga was unable to discard the inevitable truth: it wasn't with Arnold. Brain wasn't him, and couldn't be him for her, and no amount of silent forgiveness, acceptance, and consideration could magically undo this immutable fact.

Brian was Brian. Arnold was Arnold. One could _never_ substitute for the other, and in Helga's rubric, there was only one ultimate.

The tears Helga held back as they pulled back and away from the magic of that week together were building in her cheeks in mourning. Even something _perfect_ was _less_ without him.

And that is when she knew that there was no such thing as a happy ending.

* * *

Nadine and Rhonda were the first to show up. Arnold was helping Phoebe unpack the supplies they'd brought, and a little concerned that there was perhaps _too _much fruit for the week. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen this many pomegranates in a single spot before, much less the pyramid she'd had him stack carefully to hide their stems.

"I'll show you a very novel way to eat these later," she'd said with a sunny smile. "There's a lot of crushing and squishing. It's quite visceral."

Arnold had _no_ clue how she intended to eat one of those things, but he was pretty certain crushing and squishing would just make a mess. "O-oh, that sounds interesting," he replied.

"By the way," she began slowly. "How are things with Helga?"

"Uh, pretty good."

"Really?"

"Yeah...why?"

Phoebe looked at him over her glasses, one of her hips nudged out, a hand on it. "Arnold, you do realise she's my best friend that I've known since I was three. I can read her pretty well. I know something's amiss. So you're either being intentionally dishonest, or you're just really obtuse. And you're an especially empathic person, so I am fairly certain it's not the latter, but the former."

Arnold almost choked at her blatantancy. "Wow, you get right to the point don't you."

"You can thank LIla for that," she sniffed with the faintest air of indignity. She lifted a bag of rice out of a paper bag, patting it patiently. "Which is it?"

"I guess I can tell something's up with her. I was hoping it was just the stress of the whole...everything. She hasn't had a good week."

"No, although we are both to blame for that one." Phoebe patted Arnold's hand patiently this time. "Have you talked to her about this?"

"Yeah, a bit, earlier when we first got the rooms sorted. The conversation sort of...wandered around, though. I didn't get much out of her."

"Helga's not a very subtle person, nor is she very secretive. The most likely explanation is probably the correct one."

Arnold shrugged. "I think she's unhappy with how things ended up."

"Care to explain?"

"I dunno...I can't put my finger on it, but I get the distinct impression she is trying to put some distance between us. Which feels crazy, considering all the hard work we put in to get...you know, _together._"

"She's anxious."

"You think?"

"She has changed her hair exactly twice in her life. Once, during what was likely a dissociative episode, brought on by...well, you know. The second time, she was perfectly in her faculties. I think she's anxious about something happening to her."

"She asked me if I was gonna stay or not." Arnold stopped unpacking the groceries, and shrugged. "I told her I wasn't sure yet."

"Oh good grief, Arnold! You told her that?!" Phoebe pinched the bridge of her nose beneath the wire frame of her glasses, squinting her eyes shut. "What the hell?"

"Well, I wasn't going to _lie._ And the truth is, I'm still not sure. Everything that's happened since I came back...I'm not sure there's a place for me here anymore. Even the boarding house will be no home to me with Lila under lock and key there. I just don't know that I want to stick around somewhere that isn't...home."

"Helga is afraid you're going to leave again, and is pre-empting the expected disaster with her own exit. That much is obvious."

"Yeah, but, I never said I was going to leave _her_ behind."

"Take her with you? Is that what you suggest?"

"Yeah. Why not?"

Phoebe crossed her small thin arms under her breasts, looking at Arnold square in the face. "You'd better be thinking longer term than what you're giving me the impression here, if you intend to uproot Helga's life to drag her along for whatever future you see for yourself. I won't tolerate something so selfish as to just _wing it_ with her heart and her future. Neither will she, for that matter."

Arnold winced under the awfully intimidating, suddenly authoritarian glare of his tiny friend. He was not expecting this kind of reprimand.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I _was_ thinking of the future pretty long term…" Arnold hesitated, not sure he wanted to just _say_ what he'd had in mind, so unceremoniously. It felt like it would cheapen the boldness of his grand romantic gesture. "As long term as it gets, _actually._"

Arnold patted his pocket with special emphasis, nodding slowly at a gawking Phoebe. "I was thinking _proposing_ a specific long term scenario to Helga here, as a matter of fact."

Phoebe lifted her hands to her mouth, and seemed to be struggling to work out the lunacy of his suggestion. "Arnold, _no_, you can't mean...you really, _really_ need to rethink this. Think about it for a _long_ time. Take a considerably longer amount of time than you _have_ _been_ to consider this."

"Trust me, I've been thinking about this for awhile. Since the party, since coming home, since Lila, since the jungle, since I _left._" Arnold looked out one of the windows, seeing that Rhonda and Nadine had arrived and were walking up the porch steps. "I can't talk about it in front of anyone else, especially not Rhonda. Can I trust you not to tell anyone?"

Phoebe clenched her fists at her sides. "Arnold PHILLIP Shortman! Don't you dare!"

The front door swung open, and in stepped Rhonda, wearing a perfectly curious expression. "Don't you dare do what?" She looked between the two of them, pushing her rolling designer suitcase through the foyer into the main family room.

Arnold thought quickly. "Wear a thong bathing suit! It's the fashion in South America, so it's all I brought with me."

Rhonda clucked her tongue, wagging her finger as she passed the pair towards the stairway. "Major mistake, Arnold. This is hardly the climate for that kind of boldness. Although I wouldn't mind seeing you all _tucked_ in. Everyone likes a nice gift basket, even if it isn't Easter."

Arnold found himself stammering, face a rush of red. Nadine passed him shaking her head. "Never give that girl an opportunity, Arnold. She's incorrigible."

"I-it's the second bedroom to the left!" He finally called out as the pair made their way upstairs to the bedrooms to get settled.

"I'll find the way," Rhonda called in a sing-song voice, and after a few more moments they were alone again. Phoebe whipped around and grabbed Arnold's sleeve.

"We worked _really_ hard to get you guys talking and figuring out your feelings, and you're going to go do this incredibly short-sighted thing all over again!"

Arnold patted her hand. "Phoebe, when I suggested to Lila that we get married, it was mostly out of a misguided sense of obligation on my part. Of course, real affection confused me, but, it was my sense of doing the right thing that got me caught up in that mess. This is different."

"I fail to see any difference."

"I'm in love with Helga, for one. Secondly, she thinks I'm about to leave her. I feel like this will put her mind to ease on that particular issue. Thirdly...she taught me, a long time ago, that there's a lot of beauty in just letting go of my fears, anxieties, and intentions, and to just let my instincts handle things. She also taught me that she'd be there, always, to catch whatever I pitch."

"But this isn't baseball! This is your lives!"

Arnold shook his head. "Phoebe, it's the same. I can't really explain it, but, I know if I ask, she'll say yes."

"God, you're crazy. I believe Gerald would say you're bold...but are you _sure?"_

"I'm positive. I know this is right. I feel nothing but good about this...it's what I want. I think it's what she wants, too. So, why wait?"

"To get to know each other again, for starters. You've spent so much time apart!"

"This will afford us all the time we need to get acquainted. Besides, I know _Helga. _So she's a _bit_ different than I remember exactly? She's still the same Helga Pataki, deep down. The one I love."

Phoebe sat down at the kitchen table, seemingly at a loss. "There's nothing I can do to persuade you away from this course of action, is there?"

"Nope." Arnold grinned his characteristically wide, mischief-riddled smile.

"Fine. My lips are sealed. But you _don't_ have my blessing, yet. There's still a lot of unresolved mess you have to sort out first. Promise me you won't do this until then?"

"How about this...if I don't get the okay from you this trip to, heh, _pop_ my little question, I'll do it when we get back. Deal?"

"At least that will buy her some time. Fine. Deal."

The two friends shook hands, although Phoebe's grip felt cold, clammy, and unsteady. "Don't worry so much, Phoebe, I got this."

"I just think you're just repeating the mistakes of the past, personally, but...I do love you. Very much. Even though we've spent so much time apart, you're still like a brother to me. And even if I disagree with your timing, and I must reiterate that I disagree with all emphasis and vigor, I would nevertheless be proud to make that relationship more official."

Arnold kept grinning. "If all my plans for this trip work out, you'll get to see something very special at the end. Sid knows a guy, and I know Sid, and Sid owes me big time."

"What does that mean?"

"_Fireworks._"

Phoebe laughed percussively, disarmed and totally charmed by Arnold's idea despite herself. "You really _did_ think ahead. That's pretty spectacular...in that case, I'll root for your ability to _persuade_ me. But first things first, you have to turn Helga's gloomy mood around. Do you want this memory for her to be of when she'd had a miserable beach trip? You need to be more thorough than that."

Arnold nodded, and was about to suggest something when the front door opened again.

"Damn, nice place." Sid sniffed with his prominent nose, looking around, standing at the threshold. He was wearing the most garish parrot and palm tree laden turquoise tropical button up shirt Arnold had ever seen, even in all his travels in the Caribbean and the tropical Americas. It was hanging open, revealing a black muscle tee and a gold chain hanging off his neck. He had scarlet red chino shorts and some flip flops that were probably more expensive than they looked. His shaggy black hair was held in place by a rickety looking straw hat. Notably absent was Stinky, normally his perfect shadow.

"Sid, glad you could make it. I was just talking about your little contribution."

"Heh, yeah. I made sure to bring the stuff. The whole back half of my ride is full. Enough shit to break as many laws as we feel like breaking. What's the point of all this anyway?"

Phoebe's eyes went wide. "Just how spectacular are you planning for this to be, Arnold?"

Arnold grinned, striding confidently towards Sid. He clapped him on the shoulder warmly. "Oh it'll be unforgettable, won't it?"

"Couple hundred pounds of fireworks? Yeah, boy howdy, it'll stick to memory pretty good." Sid rolled his shoulder free of Arnold's hand. "Still ain't answered me what this is all for. I'd like to know since I'm the sucker setting it all up."

"It's a surprise, Sid. Trust me." Arnold's characteristic wide smile seemed to disarm anyone, even the visibly tense Sid. The shorter guy sniffed and thumbed his nose, affecting a smile which apparently couldn't be helped when around Arnold's infectious grins.

"Well I owe you at least that much. Wanna help me unload the stuff?"

"Sure, I'll be out in a second. I gotta help Phoebe with one more thing."

Sid shrugged and hopped back down the wide porch steps, leaving them alone once more. Arnold turned to Phoebe.

"I hope you can see I am not just coming to some sort of _equitable solution_, and that I am serious about this. About Helga."

Phoebe sighed, waving her hand. "Your sincerity was never in question, Arnold. It's how you're going to make any of this work, and if you've given your choice the appropriate amount of gravity in the decision making process. But, Helga is nothing if not a hopeless romantic. A gesture of this magnitude...it won't be taken lightly. I suppose, for _now, _you have my temporary approval."

Arnold beamed her a wide grin. "I'm glad we had this talk, Phoebe. We ought to talk a lot more."

"If you go through with your plan, we will be."

"Oh don't worry. It's happening." Arnold moved to go assist Sid, smiling with a newfound confidence.

All he had to do was do everything right. How hard could it be?

* * *

The rest of the gang showed up one by one.

Eugene finally pulled up in his Ford Pinto, easing the death trap of a car into the shade beneath a palm tree with grim focus. Arnold watched him, sipping a _cerveza_ and wondering if the hapless boy was going to make it the twenty feet to the porch without some additional misfortune. As luck would have it, he was able to carry his little white suitcase the short distance with only one stumble and fall.

"Hey, Arnold. I'm okay." Eugene dusted his white chinos from the sand and grass of the fall, accepting the full arm-clapping embrace Arnold swung him into. He ran a hand through his ginger hair with the nervous air of someone heading to the electric chair; the fact that many of his childhood bullies, notably Rhonda, were also staying the week was not lost on Arnold. But he was confident that old, bad air and grievances could be settled at last, with his help.

"I'm so glad you came, Eugene." Arnold grinned. "Need any help getting up to your room? Rhonda and Nadine are '_correcting the decor'_ whatever that means, but otherwise the rooms are more or less up for grabs. Oh, and Sid is here too, but he's helping Gerald get the barbecue cleaned off."

"Barbecue huh?" Eugene eyed the structure of the beach house. "It's pretty windy, is barbecue the safest idea?"

_What a skittish little dude, _Arnold thought. "Yeah, it's fine, the pit's on the leeward side of the place. Plus, I bought like six fire extinguishers, so we're set."

"Six?!" Eugene balked at the ridiculous number.

"Oh, well...yeah. We need them for...stuff. You'll see. It'll be fine. Don't worry so much. Do you need help grabbing a room?"

"No, I'm all set, thanks. Which floor is Rhonda on?"

"Second."

"I'll grab a third floor room. Thanks, Arnold. I'm...going to try to have a good time."

_He's still deeply hurt by what Rhonda and Lila did to him. _Arnold put on his winningest smile. "You're guaranteed to have a _great_ time."

"Thanks, we'll see. Where's Helga? I wanted to thank her."

"Thank her? For what?"

"Well, she finally caught Lila for everyone. I haven't thanked her in person for going through all of that."

"Oh." Arnold still hadn't accepted the full ramifications of Lila's ultimate betrayal of everyone, himself. He hadn't really addressed it with Helga, either. They talked, briefly, about the whole ordeal, but Helga made it clear she was about as excited to discuss that topic as she was the topic of their future together. It was fraught territory, and Arnold was keen to avoid peril.

"Yeah...and, I guess I owe you some sort of apology, too." Eugene sheepishly looked away, hoisting the white suitcase in two hands. His salmon polo shirt blew in the ocean breeze slightly, exposing the young man's small, taut abdomen briefly.

"No, you really don't. Besides, I have a plan for everyone to get all that stuff out and off their chests. But like, much later. Maybe day two, or three."

Eugene smiled and moved to the front door of the beach house, shaking his head. He seemed to have seen something like that coming. "Of course Arnold has a plan to save everyone. Well, I'll save my gratitude for the appropriate time, I guess. Third floor it is. Thanks, Arnold."

Arnold assured his friend it was nothing to concern himself with too terribly much. Arnold watched the waning candle of Eugene take himself up the stairs and disappear through the screened windows. _I've got to make sure he gets his confidence back somehow._

Thaddeus was next. Arnold was expecting him to crash the beach house with his expensive cars, and make a huge spectacle of himself, but to his surprise he merely showed up in a cab. He was still wearing what looked like frighteningly expensive clothes, but at least he was, more or less, not showing his ridiculous wealth off like a childhood merit badge.

He rolled his suitcase through the sand, and Arnold watched with impatience. He _really_ didn't like who Curley had become. He wasn't really sure what was going on with him growing up, but he'd become the symbol of everything he'd grown to loathe in the world during his time globetrotting and adventuring with his parents. Arnold was used to people like Curly being the monetary backer behind the worst of the things he'd seen; Money had become his primary adversary, and it was not a prejudice he easily shed. Thad was the worst kind of capitalist to Arnold. A man whose money made money, for no purpose or gain other than his own selfishness and greed. All that wealth could change untold numbers of lives if used the right way, but instead it merely accumulated for the sake of a small, petty man.

Arnold hated that he felt such acid antagonism towards his old friend. As a kid, Curly had been a total mess, and pretty hyperactive and unhinged, but he was just a _kid._ But now, he was an adult, fully endowed with free will and the power to exercise it, and he chose...selfishness.

It did not sit well with Arnold.

But, still, Thad was _technically_ invited by Phoebe, at Rhonda's insistence no less, so he would be friendly and cordial as societal norms dictated he ought to. Even though he spent the vast majority of his life in Latin and South America, he'd still been given a rigorous education on glad handing from Miles and Stella. They told him it would come in handy when he needed to go beggar for funding from government and private investors. The life of freedom fighters was not one paved with monetary surplus.

"Thaddeus," Arnold forced a smile. "Glad you could make it."

"Ah, Arnold! Just the man I was hoping to encounter." Thaddeus dragged his over-heavy suitcase by the extendable handle, up the short stairs to the porch. Arnold drank from his beer rather than respond, to keep his thoughts on that particular subject to himself. "Are you well? You seem fit as a fiddle."

Arnold was primarily struck that Thad wasn't demanding service to carry his bag. He still expected it to happen, however. "Uh, thanks. I am well. Just starting to unwind, actually, while everyone gets unpacked and comfortable. I can help you, if you like."

"No, my good man, that won't be necessary. I have little in the way of belongings, and I'm quite capable of hoisting them up a few blasted stairs, thank you."

"Sure. I'd recommend the third floor rooms. There's a couple left."

"Third floor? Sounds top-rate. I'll settle for second, no need to hog the limelight!"

_What the hell is going on with him? _Arnold was dead certain this was not the same individual he stopped from fistfighting Patty and Harold two weeks ago.

"Uh, actually, the third floor rooms are smaller. Second floor is where Rhonda's staying."

Thaddeus hesitated. "Ah, I see. Well, I'll take the recommendation of my fine host! I shan't look unkindly upon the careful considerations of my gracious friend Arnold! Third floor it is! Please, don't assist me, I'm quite capable of this burden and much more! Tut! We've barely touched the tapwell of my strength!"

_What the fuck? _Arnold did _not_ know how to address this behavior. Was he high? Sometimes people got like this when they were high. "Are you on drugs, Thad?"

"Wh-what?! WHAT?! No! What would even make you ask such a barbaric question?!" Curly set his suitcase down on the porch, hands held out pleadingly. "Do I seem high?!"

"Frankly, yeah. Little bit. Not the first time I've seen a dude acting strange enough to ask that, either."

"God dammit," Curly swore, and held his chin with a hand, seeming to fall deep in thought. "The doc said this new cocktail wouldn't do that!"

"Doc? Thad, what's going on?" Arnold's impatience began to grow for the little man on the porch. _How on Earth am I going to get through five days with this guy?_

"My doctor. In light of...certain circumstances, to which you are not yet privy, we have re-arranged my medicinal dosages and admixtures. It's nothing you need to concern yourself with, although one of the unintended side-effects appears to be a mild case of hypomania."

"Oh." _Oh. _Arnold had not considered that Thaddeus might be...medicated. It would certainly explain specific aspects of his personality, if nothing else. "Sorry I asked, then."

"Not to worry, Arnold old sport!" _Old sport? I don't like that. _Arnold hid a scowl behind a swig of beer. "I'll give the good doctor a call immediately, and set the dosage right again. It won't do to give off an air of threatening hyperactivity, after all! Ho ho ho ho!"

_Eugh I do not like that laugh. _Arnold held a strained smile. Thad didn't seem to notice. "Alright, dude. Talk to you later."

"What's for dinner, by the way? And when? I must dose on a full stomach I am afraid."

"Gerald and Sid are barbecuing some things. Probably around six or seven."

"Bully! I'll scrounge up some provisions until then and keep this persistent _peckishness_ at bay. Don't worry after me, Arnold old sport. I'll find my way! Farewell! Until we cross destinies again!"

Arnold watched Thaddeus proclaim his brief departure all the way up the stairs. If the menagerie of his friends arriving was going to be _this_ eventful, he'd be in for a long day.

Luckily, Patty and Harold, the two other he expected to arrive, didn't show up immediately like the others had. Arnold was watching more or less cluelessly while Helga and Gerald set up the largest big screen television with a Wii, totally unfamiliar to recreational video games. It seemed to be more of Helga and Gerald's area of expertise, so he didn't interfere.

Rhonda and Nadine descended the stairs in their beachwear, swimsuits and sarongs of flatteringly bold colors and cuts.

"Ah, this is going to be a fine, relaxing sabbatical, don't you think, Nadine?" Rhonda draped herself onto a stool at the kitchen bar counter. "Who's in charge of mixing drinks?"

"I am," Helga called out. "None of your fuckers knows the first thing about a good cocktail."

"Now hold on just a minute, Pataki," Gerald scowled. "I'm the designated mixer at all of my frat's functions."

"I've been to your parties. I've tasted your drinks. I stand by my statement." Helga sneered. She plugged something into the back of the television and it came alive with the face of some certain cartoonish figures Arnold supposed were famous. "There we go! Who's down for some Wii Golf? We can set up a round robin tourney, place some kind of interesting dosh on the outcome!"

"Gambling, Helga. _Really_." Rhonda snorted, looking bored by the prospect.

"You know, Rhonda, I remember a time when you were in the mud and grass with us, playing football against Torvald and his bullies, and having a _damn_ good time of it, too." Helga shook her head. "Besides, we got nothing else to do until the grub's done."

"I intend to sun myself _magnificently_, actually. And you know, spend time at the beach, _at the beach._ Not stay indoors playing some silly video game." Rhonda waved a slender hand dismissively.

"If we all take turns, won't it be a shorter time playing, Rhonda?" Arnold spoke up finally. "You can go sun and whatever else for a bit, and we'll call you when it's your turn."

Rhonda blinked at him. "Well, I guess that sounds fine."

"I changed my mind, she _can't_ play." Helga grunted. "Not with that attitude."

"Helga, it's just not her thing. She said she'd take a turn, why don't you just get everyone set up?" Arnold wasn't sure _how_ this thing worked, but, he reasoned it probably needed some sort of setting up. Giving Helga something to do was a good idea. He needed to keep the peace, this entire trip. A silly video game was not going to derail his entire efforts.

Helga scoffed. "Yeah, sure, fine. Whatever, play, don't play, I'll set us all up. Should I even ask if she wants to make her own Mii?"

Arnold was very certain he had no idea what that was. Rhonda pushed off the stool, and stormed over. "Of _course_ I want to make my own Mii. You'd probably make me look like a horrible little gremlin, Helga."

"Smart call, I would have."

To Arnold's bewilderment, Rhonda easily took the controls and started to navigate the alien interfaces to create a likeness of herself in the game to be used. He tried to see what she was doing to prevent embarrassing himself when it was his turn. _Guess she plays video games after all._

Nadine sidled up to Arnold, clinking his beer with her own, freshly opened and in a yellow koozie. "Don't let her fool you. She and I used to stay up until sunrise playing Wii Tennis back in high school. She's a lot more into this stuff than she lets on."

"Oh, cool." Arnold shrugged. "I didn't know."

"How have you been, Shortman? We haven't really talked much yet."

Arnold watched Helga offer little sarcastic suggestions whenever a particularly grotesque option for Rhonda's virtual avatar came up. "That's true! You and I haven't really had a chance. That's why I'm really glad everyone is coming to this thing."

"Define _everyone?_"

"Oh, well, besides everyone present, I think we can count on Harold and Big Patty to crash the party sometime today or tomorrow, just to hazard a guess. We invited Stoop Kid but he said he had some more stoops to see in Seattle. And Sheena started her semester abroad right after the party, so, she couldn't make it."

"But no Brainy or LIla." Nadine gave Arnold a knowing smile.

"Ah. Well, Brian was invited, of course." Arnold lowered his voice to be just audible to Nadine and himself. "But I think he's avoiding me."

"Mhm. And we won't see any more of miss Sawyer." Nadine sipped her beer.

"No, no we won't."

"You sure setting her up at your folk's old place was a good idea?"

"The Sunset Arms was always a sort of net to catch society's runoff. She'll fit right in. In fact, I'm betting it'll be good for her to have to deal with my Grandma for awhile."

Nadine snickered, and jerked her head towards Helga, who was cackling in victorious pose over Rhonda. They'd started a game of...Arnold wasn't sure, but it looked competitive. A subdued Rhonda only just _barely_ could not hide her indignity.

"You and her, huh. Can't say I didn't think it would happen someday, but, it's still kind of incredible."

"Yeah...wait, what do you mean?"

"Well, there's just been so much in your way. Rhonda filled me in on the details, and, wow. I thought _our_ mess was complicated. I feel for you, Shortman, really."

"Thanks, I guess. We'll be fine, I'm sure."

"Oh no doubt. There's bound to be some kind of cosmic force pulling you together."

_Yeah, or trying to push us apart._

"Anyway, Arnold, it's just...really great to see you again. I'm looking forward to hearing some of your tales during the trip."

"I have plenty. And plans to share them all. In all this mess, I never got a chance to explain...well, anything, really."

Arnold watched Helga and Rhonda fiercely compete, both apparently unwilling to admit the technical skill in the other, and far more into the game than the spirit of friendly competition would normally dictate.

"This is my last chance," he said, watching the girl he loved from a million miles away. "I'm going to make it count."

* * *

A/N: Part 2, "Wishes," will take a good bit of time to perfect. Please excuse my length between updates, but we're almost done and I want to make it count.


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